All There Ever is, or Ever was, or Ever will be
by Tetsuwan Penguin
Summary: This story is a sequel to my Astro Boy 'Methuselah' story. In the far distant future as the universe is dying out, Astro and his siblings are reincarnated as human beings on a world orbiting a red dwarf star where a group of 'witches' seek out God's final command to help re-create the cosmos.
1. Chapter 1

**All That There Ever Is, or Ever Was or Ever Will Be**

_Introduction:_

_This story was my 2014 entry in the NaNo "Novel in a month" competition. While it is actually 36 chapters long, it will be carved up into pieces and posted as six to eight 'chapters' on the Fan Fiction site as I edit the story for submission here. Originally this novel contained several chapters that would have required the 'MA' rating, I've toned them down to be 'T' acceptable, though there is innuendo involved here to suggest the original MA content. _

_This story is a sequel to my Astro Boy fan fiction "Who Mourns for Methuselah" In that story I created my own head canon of the last days of Atom and his siblings. Now I look deep into the future, when the universe itself is slowly coming to an end. In this end time I imagine a world where the last remains of mankind are eeking out an existence on a world orbiting a ancient dwarf star. It is here that an order of women with enhanced mental powers are trying to hold back the clock as the universe winds down. This story is inspired by some ideas from Philip Jose Farmer's "River World" novels, as well as Frank Herbert's "Dune" books. I've also borrowed an idea from James Blish's "Cities in Flight". The story opens as Atom and his siblings are resurrected in human form on this strange world._

* * *

_**Book One – The light in the upper valley**_

_Zero._

**C**obalt sat in the back of the MIT lecture hall absorbing the professor's lesson. As a robot he was the ideal learning machine having perfect concentration and total recall of everything he ever heard or saw. He knew that many of the human students felt uncomfortable around him, so he tended to sit in the back of the classrooms where they wouldn't have to notice him. The class on Cosmology and Astronomy was particularly interesting to him since it dealt with the forces of the universe that most paralleled religion and mysticism, the two things that humans were so often attracted to, something he could never quite understand.

**'M**ost red dwarf stars were born in the earliest moments of the universe. They are of a class of stars barely possessing barely enough hydrogen fuel to ignite the nuclear fires of thermonuclear fusion. They are miserly lot, hording their precious fuel by barely generating much light and heat. They were still babies when the larger giants surrounding them blew themselves apart in tremendous supernova blasts which seeded the universe with heavy metals. They would then pass though the clouds of this debris picking up some of these elements, adding new lines to their spectra.

As new populations of stars were born the first galaxies formed. Second and third generations of new suns erupted into existence as the vast clouds of interstellar gas enriched by the heavy elements created in the death knells of the early giants condensed into systems of stars and planets. Now some 13 billion years after the big bang life came into existence on these new worlds. On at least one such world intelligent and self aware life forms sprung into being. These creatures pondered their own existence and wondered if they were alone in the vastness of the universe. Our civilization created machines in their own images, machines that could think and be aware of their own existence. Some of these machines would out live their creators. (Interesting speculation on the professor's part, Cobalt thought).

The universe will grow old, as everything must. All of the mainstream stars will burn out, and all of the interstellar hydrogen will either be used up in star formation, or will thin out by the ever constant expansion of space-time itself. No new stars or planets will then be created and the universe will slowly grow dark as the distance between stars increases towards infinity.

Then only the dwarf stars will remain. One trillion years into the future, they will have not even reached middle age. They will wander the universe in the space between the where the galaxies once stood. Torn from their systems when their suns had died, rogue planets will be drifting in interstellar space. Frozen balls of rock, their atmospheres clinging to their surfaces as frozen vapor these bodies will carry with them memories of a brighter time. On some of these rocky bodies life will have once risen and have died out. Perhaps two such rogue planets will capture each other, one a massive giant, the other an Earth like body. They will now be orbiting each other around a common center of gravity, dancing in a tight spin as they drift though the dark cosmos.

Fate, and enough time may allow the two bodies to enter the sphere of influence of a dwarf star. The small sun will have expanded as it aged, as all main sequence stars eventually do. Now nearly twice as bright as when it had first been born, the dwarf star might accept the two rouge bodies as its own. Orbiting within the dwarf's 'life zone' where enough radiant heat may be collected to keep water molecules in a liquid state, the smaller body will begin to defrost. Its atmosphere will out gas from the frozen surface, and its oceans will craw up from the depths of its mantle. The dead world will begin to come to life again. It may take millions of years, but what had once happened before can happen again anew.'

While to some of the students, the professors story sounded like a fairy tale, to Cobalt it seemed a likely prediction of how the universe would grow old and fade away. The idea of a swan song where a final surge of life was reborn seemed like a wishful thought, but somehow Cobalt liked it.

Of course there were other theories, things that he had already read in the later chapters of the text book. Perhaps the professor would cover some of them in his next lecture. Cobalt wondered about the mysteries of dark mater and dark energy and how the very fabric of the universe might someday expand so rapidly that it would actually rip itself apart, all mater disintegrating into a thin cold cosmic soup. Ah, but that would be hundreds of billions of years in the future, long after he'd have been rusted away and forgotten, or so he thought.

* * *

_One._

**T**he lady Rebeca looked down from her bedroom window from the southern tower of the ancient castle. The morning's first light appeared in her window before it reached the village due to the elevation of her vantage point. She had a commanding view of the countryside below her from her window. In the distance were the forest covered mountains and the grassy valley at their feet. The mountains caught the moisture laden wind that drifted from the sea hundreds of miles away to the north. This wet wind would swirl about over the top of the tree covered horizon forming dark rain clouds that would dump the moisture which would pour down into streams running down hill into the grassy valley. From streams, into brooks, the water eventually emptied into the river which divided the known country from the distant lands beyond. Few had crossed the river and gone very far, fewer still had traveled down its length, for they knew that there was nothing good to be found beyond their borders, and that the lands beyond were taboo.

At the foot of the valley was the Village Town where all commerce took place and where all of the merchants plied their trades. The land surround the valley was farmed, the river itself was fished. Between the crops the farmers grew, the animals and fowl raised for their meat and the milk and eggs from the cows, goats, chickens and ducks; enough substance existed to feed the population of the country, but just barely.

For as long as the Lady Rebeca could remember, the valley and the surrounding farmlands, and the Village Town were all that there was. The population remained fairly constant, with the birth rate being about equal to the passing of the elders.

Far in the distance, connected to the Village Town by an ancient road, it was written in the ancient texts that there had once been other settlements known to the people. Contact with them had been lost years during a great upheaval that was recorded in those sacred documents.

**T**he population was divided into several orders. The farmers lived in small huts in their fields. They spent their lives tending crops of grains and vegetables and they produced the food stocks that the people depended on. Cotton and flax were grown to provide fibers for weaving cloths. Sheep and goats provided milk, meat, and wool.

Fishermen worked on the river with their nets to catch trout, and other fish. They were the boatmen, and traveled up and down the river as far as the boundaries of the known country. Goods traveled on the river faster than over the land.

At the edge of the valley, in the foot hills of the mountains, the miners dug into the Earth in search of their treasures. Coal, and metal ores were extracted from deep below the surface. These fed the foundries where goods of iron, copper, and silver were created. Shoes for the horses, gates for the houses, and table wares were hammered out of elements of the earth by the village Smiths.

Nearby, the lumber men felled trees and sawmills cut the lumber. Fire wood for the furnaces, and lumber for building houses and furniture were produced. The foresters minded the trees and the lumber jacks only selected only enough trees for harvest to meet the needs of the population. They pruned the forest carefully, leaving it healthy for new growth.

In the Village Town artisans crafted goods in their shops, and merchants manned their shops.

Then there was the order of the Matriarchal Clergy to which Rebeca belonged. They were the elite that kept the civilization in check. They were an old order, so old that few knew how they had come into being. All of the priestly order were women. They were sometimes called 'Witches' because it was said that they worked dark magic. In fact, the order had long practiced honing their mental abilities through the use of drugs extracted from the holy Teska trees, and hours of meditation. The priests claimed that they could see into the future, and look into the past. They held onto their power by controlling the menfolk though sexual prowess, it was said that they could control their own reproductive systems so as to select which sperm from which of their mates they would allow to fertilize their eggs. Thus they controlled the future of their own order.

**T**he castle stood just outside the town, visible from anywhere in the valley. It was built on the highest ground in the valley, upon the the foothills in the otherwise flat countryside. It was said that the Witches had caused the land to rise up with their magic so that they could build their castle high in the air to have dominion over the region. No one knew how long the structure had been there. The huge granite blocks that had been mortared together to create it must have been carried a long distance, as there were no known quarries containing the green stone anywhere near the valley. The large blocks had been cut with such precision, and were fit together so perfectly that it seemed impossible such a monument could even be constructed, as no artisan in the village had the skills to do such mason work.

It was in the castle that the clergy women lived. It was from here that they ruled over the valley. It was from here that they demanded tribute from the citizens of the valley. And it was from here that they pondered the fate of the universe, for they believed that they were the guardians of eternity. At night they would study the night sky while meditating in prayer. There were few stars visible as only the dim dwarfs were left. Even with optical aid only a few dozen points of light could be seen in the sky, but the patterns they made were noted and the order believed the movements of the few remaining stars carried messages from God.

**T**he elder Mother appeared in Rebeca's room. Rebeca never heard her coming or going, the leader of the priests could project an aura that shielded her from visibility when she desired it. Few of the priests actually knew how old their leader was, she had ascended to power as the head of the order before most of them had been born, and she hid her true age very well. Elder Mother was nearing the end of her lifespan and the priests all knew that one of them would soon ascend to take her place. The new Elder Mother had already been chosen by the current one, and the one of them that would go through the ordeal to take her place already knew who she was, but kept this secret to herself, as required by their faith.

"Did you see the apparition in the valley this morning?" the elder Mother asked.

"Again?" Rebeca quired.

"Yes," She said, "The second time this month."

"I suppose we will once again have newcomers in our midst" Rebeca replied.

It had started during the end of the last harvest season. A strange glow was seen in the upper valley not far from where the largest stream came down from the mountains. It appeared as a pinkish green glow two hours before sunrise, just as the fire flies were departing for the night. Each time the glow in the valley had appeared, several strangers would show up in the village. They would sometimes have no knowledge of who they were, or how they had arrived. They would tell stories of having died in a far off land and of waking up in the soft clover grass in the upper valley. It was as if they had been reincarnated from a previous existence and been placed in the upper valley above the Village Town. Doctor White, the village's only physician was one such newcomer who had walked down into the Village Town from the meadow in the upper valley.

"How many more mouths can we feed?" Rebeca asked.

"So far the newcomers have been bringing valuable skills with them." The elder Mother answered. "The farmers have been producing bumper crops, and the river men have netted large catches of bass and trout. No one will go hungry this season."

"I will go down to the village and keep an eye out for them." She replied.

"You are still hoping that you may yet find the 'One'," the elder Mother asked.

"The prophesy says that a stranger will come who can pass the test of the Teska and survive " Rebeca replied. "We are now reading in the stars that the end time is near and that a seed must be prepared to ensure that the universe regenerates and for that the next Elder Mother must find a suitable mate."

"I know well what the prophesy says, child." The elder Mother barked back. "Twice before you have put someone up to the test, and twice before the unfortunate subject paid the price of not being the 'One' with his life."

"I know that only too well." Rebeca said. "I also know that the stars are getting dim, we don't have much time left. When God's time is up and the Universe fades away it is our destiny to to regenerate creation."

"Don't worry child. God will provide." Elder Mother said. "He will send us the One when the time comes."

* * *

_Two._

**D**reams that had been frozen in time for hundreds of billions of years suddenly picked up where they had left off. Four of them in total, for there were four minds suddenly called back into existence. They had been frozen in place at the exact point where their power had run down to zero, frozen in the vacuum of the near absolute zero of outer space.

**A**tom had succumb to infinity lying against a frozen rock on a comet in a hyperbolic orbit leaving the yellow dwarf G class star for the first and last time. The last thing his eyes saw was the Earth slowly growing smaller as the comet headed into deep space. Even after all of his systems had shut down, his electronic brain still functioned on low power, its clocks cycling at mere kilohertz instead of their normal terahertz, with the effect that his dreams now ran at a snails pace. It took him months to run though events that had taken hours, as he dreamed of pleasurable thoughts. He saw his wife and children again in his mind, childhood friends Tamao and Kenichi, his brothers Kobaruto and Chitan, and sister Uran. The last thing he visioned in his minds eye were Tenma and Ochanomizu-Hakase, his two fathers.

**U**ran and Titan expired in each others arms in the frozen interior of the Venusian spacecraft. After rediscovering each other they soon realized that they were more to each other than brother and sister, for they were not actually created as siblings, but were truly unique individuals that complemented each other. Together they were whole, apart they were wanting. As their lives flashed back in their minds, their electronic brains cycling down to a snails pace to conserve their exhausted power, bits and pieces of their lives replayed before their blind eyes.

Uran looked up into Pluto's face and smiled. She wasn't afraid of the giant robot who had been sent to destroy her brother in single combat. Instead she had dressed up to look like Atom, wearing a pair of his black pants with the wide green waist band. She insisted that she was Atom, but the horned robot saw though this and demanded she reveal her brothers location. When she refused, she found herself stuffed into the giant robots chest, behind a locked panel.

The scene shifted and Uran remembered the time she had been split into two for her desire to compete in the roboting matches. Always the fearless tomboy, she had almost the same horsepower as her brother and wasn't ashamed to use it. The duplication of herself into two pieces left each part with less than half the power of the whole and she found herself outmatched in the ring and about to be destroyed when Atom showed up at the last minute.

As her power faded she saw the face of little Mars, the robot that had been created as an almost clone of Atom. Mars had been a little brat, who had a crush on Uran, and though she wouldn't admit it, she had one on him as well. Mars had been her first love, and after their all too brief marriage the little bot, now a grown up as she, had been killed by a stampede of wild elephants during their honeymoon in Africa on a mission to protect endangered species. The very last sight that lay frozen in her image processor was that of Titan.

**T**itan had been born with the name Chi-tan, which is what Uran had always called him, despite his changing the spelling when he had joined NASA. Unlike human children, Titan had total recall of his infant years, and fondly remembered how he could literally knock down walls with his cries. He remembered all too well the time he'd been kidnapped by robot thieves, and how he'd sent them running with his yelling that leveled an entire city block. There was the period of many years where he had been lost on a mission testing the very first transluminal spacecraft from earth. Upon his return to civilization on Mars he'd spent some time in the hospital, where he caused some trouble. First there had been his yell upon awaking that destroyed several rooms on the recovery wing of the hospital. And then there had been his reaction to a bowl of chili which had topped the Richter scale for flatulence. As his power reached zero, his sightless eyes last saw the face of Uran.

**K**obaruto, or Cobalt as he was usually called, was the last of the four to expire. He spent his final years on Mars watching as the planet turned green from the terraforming operation. After Ketchup junior had died, Cobalt found himself all alone, and he became less diligent on his own self maintenance. His final requests were to be buried in deep space, hoping that he might some day be rejoined with his siblings. Since he had been shut down instead of slowing failing his memories had stopped at a point of his own choosing. Somehow the last thing he recalled was his crash landing on top of Dr. Tenma's brand new automobile as he fell out of a tree trying to rescue a kitten. He had been the co-creation of the human boy Tobio, whose death in a traffic accident would be the seminal event that drove his poor father mad, thus setting the scene for Atom's creation.

**I**n the high valley, just below the mountain forests, a mist began to rise from the ground forming a semi spherical bubble. It was still dark, the mornings first light had not yet began to appear in the east, the sun still lay far enough below the horizon that its light had not yet begun to brighten the dark skies. Yet the valley took on a strange light as the misty dome began to glow an eerie pink and green. Underneath this cover of glowing mist an apparition appeared as four somethings solidified into being.

**T**he four bodies were laying on their backs facing upwards at the dark sky. In the east the first dim red light of the rising sun had just started to appear, and a cool breeze blew down from the mountains. The soft clover grass that the four of them lay in smelled from the dew that had accumulated in the moist predawn, and the gentle hum of insects darting from flower to flower was the only sound. None of the humanoids lying on the ground stirred, though the sound of their breathing began to become stronger. They were grouped in pairs, the taller males lay next to each other, while the smaller male and the female lie a few meters away, their hands lightly touching in an affectionate grip. The taller of the two males began to snore and cough, his eyelids flicked back and forth. The other, next to him seemed to be stretching the muscles of his arms as his mouth opened in a yawn.

In the distance birds began to chip, and from a nearby pond the croaking of the bullfrogs drifted over on the breeze. The new day slowly dawned, the blackness of the sky gave way to a dark blue as the dwarf star approached the horizon. The glowing mist began to clear, and it became possible to see beyond the valley where they lay. One by one their eyes opened and their became aware of themselves and each other.

**A**tom was the first to become conscious. He quickly blinked his eyes and rotated his head to confirm the fact that he was not lying on the cold icy rock of the rouge comet, but rather in a much more comfortable location. He pulled a handful of clover grass and brought his fist to his face to smell it. He looked down at his body. He was wearing a pair of soft, slightly faded jeans and a plain white cotton tee shirt. On his feet were a pair of long cotton socks covered by a pair of faded red leather boots. Atom pulled up his shirt to look at his chest, and was surprised. The first thing that caught his eyes was his navel. He stuck a finger in it to feel it, to make sure it was real. His skin gave way easily to his touch, unlike the artificial, metallic covering his body used to have. The most obvious thing was the absence of the panel door. "I'm not a robot anymore?" he muttered aloud. Upon hearing his voice he received his second surprise. He now spoke in a pitch at least one octave lower than he remembered.

Atom turned his head to see Kobaruto stirring to life. His brother still had the two sharp cowlicks of hair sticking up above his head, and Atom quickly ran his fingers though his own hair to find that his own famous hair spikes were still present, at least in the form of long unruly tufts sticking out at the same angle as his star like spikes had once done. Cobalt was also dressed in a similar garb, but with dark blue boots, also somewhat worn. As his brother also self examined his own body, Atom laughed at him. "Yes bro, we are both flesh and blood now." he said. "Don't ask me how, I don't know where we are, or how we got here either."

**A** sudden loud cry broke the stillness, reverberating off the mountains behind them. It was a familiar voice, though an octave lower in pitch than they had remembered.  
"Looks like Titan is also here and has awakened." Cobalt said. "I wonder if Uran is close by."

The sound of her familiar voice answered Kobaruto's question. Atom and his brother walked the few paces that separated them from their siblings. "Are we..." Titan started to ask.

"Yes, we all are." Atom replied. "It might appear that the Buddha was correct all along. We are all reincarnated eventually after death, even robots."

"But we appear to be human now." Uran said.

"Isn't that what we always wanted?" Atom smiled.

"I know it's what you always wanted." Uran answered. "I guess deep down so did I, though I never thought about that consciously."

Titan stuck his hand into his pants to confirm his suspicions. "I think I'm anatomically correct now." he laughed looking at Uran with some lust in his eyes. Uran turned around and tested herself with her finger tips. She turned to face Chi-tan, a deep red blush on her face. "Oh my!" she laughed. The two of them suddenly locked lips as Atom and Kobaruto face palmed.

**T**he sky brightened as the sun rose above the horizon. Cobalt shaded his eyes with his left hand and watched the orb as it cleared the rim of the world. Uran looked around and pointed toward the lower part of the valley. "If we follow that stream it seems to lead toward a clearing, maybe a settlement."

"Did you hear that?" Titan asked.

"Yes I think I did." Atom said. Cobalt nodded as well.

"You mean that kind voice?" Uran asked.

"Yes," Titan agreed. "I didn't actually hear it, I sorta felt it. It was a suggestion in my mind that we go that way." he pointed in the direction that Uran had previously indicated.

As they walked the sun rose higher in the sky. Despite having cleared the dense atmosphere the stars light remained a reddish color, unlike the way the sun appeared on Earth. Cobalt noted the fact, but he didn't comment on it. As they walked downhill they could see the outline of the village below them. Off in the distance, the sound of cows mooing, ducks quacking, and chickens clucking wafted towards their ears. "Sounds like a farm in the distance." Atom noted.

Uran looked up and pointed. Some distance away, the top of a tower could be seen, rising taller as they approached it. "It looks like part of a tall building, like a castle." She said. "I wonder who lives there?"

They soon found themselves on a cobble stone road. Behind them, the pavement seemed to disappear towards the horizon as it lead away from the lower valley. In front of them, the road clearly lead into the village they were approaching. They passed though a gate in a a tall stone wall at the boarder of the town. Ahead of them came the sound of a clock striking 8 times. "8 O'clock in the morning." Uran said. "We're just in time for breakfast."

* * *

_Three._

**B**ügermeister Köenig was used to getting up at the crack of dawn. His roots were in the farming community, and his parents still lived out in the countryside raising chickens and pigs. As the youngest child in the family, he knew that he was not going to inherit the farmland, and that he'd have to make his own way in life. With that in mind, he'd taken up an apprenticeship with one of the metalsmithes in the village and had become rather good at. When Smith Paul's eyes started to give out, Köenig took over his shop and managed to eek out a decent living making and selling household items of silver and pewter.

He'd become rather respected in the Village Town and his opinion on matters was well respected. Köenig had become a collector of books and he was quite well self educated. It wasn't too surprising then when he'd been asked to serve on the village elders council, and eventually was elected to the position of Bügermeister.

As soon as he had accepted the office, he began to wish that he'd hadn't. Mind you, it wasn't that the responsibilities were too great, the village really ran itself and the townspeople got along with each other just fine. Most of the Bügermeister's position was ceremonial anyway, presiding over construction of a new building, being the witness to the naming of a new baby, or giving a speech at a holiday festival. None of those tasks were terribly troublesome, and Köenig didn't mind the public notoriety. He also had to serve as the judge in the town court, but as the crime rate was practically zero, the job really consisted of being a rubber stamp for decisions involving an interpretation of the law when two parties had a disagreement. No, the job itself wasn't a problem, it was what came with it. The one part of the job that no one ever talked about, was having to deal with the witches.

**B**ügermeister Köenig knew who lived in the castle on the hill somewhere outside the village town. The matriarchal priests were not often seen, they spent most of their time hiding in their castle, where they contemplated the forces of the universe and wielded their mental control over the people who lived below them. It was said that whenever a strange thought came into someone's mind, if anyone ever did anything out of character, it was the work of the witch priests. Only they had a direct line of communication with God, and that fact was enough to put a deep fear of them into the hearts of anyone.

Whenever the matriarch's needed to make a request of the village (which was really a demand, for no one dared refuse them), they would communicate it through one individual only, and as that person would have to be someone of authority, it would be the current Bügermeister. Usually one of the younger members of the priesthood, a woman who had not yet become of age and had taken her final vows which would fully anoint her into the inner circle of the order, would carry a message to the Bügermeister, although sometimes a group of the priests of the Elder Mother herself would show up at his door demanding his attention. Sometimes the message was that the official was expected to come back to the castle to receive his orders, sometimes the message would be delivered directly to his ear in the village. Köenig much preferred not to have to enter the priest's castle. He'd been there only twice, and he figured that each visit had dissolved several years from his life.

**T**he Lady Rebeca saddled her white horse and road out of the castle courtyard. She headed out on the cobblestone road into the village town. The task usually fell onto her to carry the elder Mother's messages to the Bügermeister, a task that she actually enjoyed for it allowed her to leave the confines of her domain and to travel freely in the world, even if only for a few hours. Very soon she would reach the age of ascension and would have to shoulder the responsibilities that came along with it. She would have to commit herself fully to the order, and become lost in the mental bond with the great beyond. That scared her somewhat, although she had accepted her fate. She was the eldest of the remaining minors, and was next in line for the priesthood to bring their order back to 13 in number. The Elder Mother was nearing the end of her existence, soon she would expire and one of the priests would be chosen to be converted to replace her. Rebeca had seen a vision telling her that Elder Mother had already chosen her to be that one.

The white mare trotted carefully along the cobblestone road leading into the village. Rebeca noticed the horizon slowly becoming brighter as the sun began to make its first appearance of the new day. In the Village Town, the populace would be just starting to wake and make their rounds. The shop owners would be getting ready to greet the day. The Lady road along the main street and arrived at the house of the Bügermeister. This wouldn't be the first time she'd greeted him at first light to instruct him to meet new arrivals to the Village Town. She hoped that he wouldn't be as rattled about it as the previous time.

**B**ügermeister Köenig, opened his door and timidly bade the Lady Rebeca to enter. The window shades were down, and the interior of the front room was illuminated by a pair of carbon filament lamps. From his nervous quivering, it was clear to the Lady that the Bügermeister still feared her, as did most of the village residents.

"Bügermeister Köenig," Rebeca said in a calming voice, "I've come to request your assistance again in the matter of welcoming new arrivals."

"Again?" Köenig asked.

"Yes," the Lady replied. "The pink green light was seen in the upper valley again early this morning. This is the second time this month that it has been observed."

"How many?" Köenig questioned.

"We never know, but so far there has always been fewer than a dozen at any given time." She said. "You will see to it that the new arrivals are given lodging, and you are free to assign them suitable occupation. I'm sure that they will fit in, just as all the previous new arrivals have. I will be watching from a short distance away."

"I've heard that your order believes a savior will be among them." The Bügermeister blurted out, "That's why you witches take such interest in the appearance of these strangers. In fact, you are probably responsible for their apparition"

Rebeca gracefully waved her right hand in front of the Bügermeister in an nonthreatening gesture. She placed two non adjacent fingers of her hand on the mans temple as she spoke.

"We actually do not know what power is bringing these off worlders to our village." She said. "We do think they are reincarnated souls from our own distant past, so it is quite possible that the one we seek will someday be among them."

Rebeca removed her hand from the Bügermeister's forehead and leaned forward to place a kiss there. The touch of her lips had a calming effect on Köenig, and he no longer trembled in fear in the presence of the witch. Köenig opened the shades of the windows on either side of the front door. He found his topcoat and hat, and slipped his arms into the garment. He turned to see the door was now open, and the Lady Rebeca gone. "How silently the priests move" he thought to himself. Köenig stepped out into the street, closing the front door of his dwelling behind him. He made his way towards the the road leading into the village town, and looked up at the clock in the square. The clocks hands marked half past the seventh hour. If today's apparition was on the usual schedule their newly resurrected arrivals should make their appearance within the next hour.

* * *

_Four._

**T**he Lady Rebeca walked her white mare towards a stand of trees that stood near the break in the wall surrounding the village town. Although she was concealed from view of anyone entering the village via the cobblestone road leading towards the large gateway in the wall, she had a good view of the plaza that was just beyond the gate. She waited, noting that the sunlight was now full on the entrance to the town.

**B**ügermeister Köenig stood in the middle of the plaza. From his vantage point he had a clear view of the gateway at the entrance way in the stone wall. The large iron metal gate was almost always left in the open position, but its hinges were kept well oiled to prevent them from rusting. He glanced upward at the clock in the town hall tower and noticed it was now just a minute to eight. His stomach growled a bit to remind him that he hadn't had any breakfast, something that the witch's appearance had distracted him from remembering to take care of.

As the tower clock began to strike the 8 O'clock hour, four figures appeared in the distance walking along the road toward the village entrance. As the early morning dew slowly evaporated, the fog like blur surrounding the four newcomers slowly disappeared and they could be seen clearly.

**A**tom and Cobalt lead the way, followed closely by Uran and Titan. They passed though the gateway and entered the plaza. Atom looked around him and saw a few townspeople going about their business, totally, oblivious to the presence of him and his siblings, Standing in the center of the plaza a gentleman wearing a clean suit covered by a top coat had his eyes directed their way. He slowly approached them, wearing a weak smile on his face.

"Welcome to our village." the Bügermeister said, extending his hand in friendship. "I am Bügermeister Köenig".

Atom accepted the mans hand. "I'm glad to meet you as well," Atom replied. "My name is Atom, and these are my brothers Cobalt and Titan, and my sister Uran," he added pointing to each of his siblings in turn. "I have quite a few questions to ask you."

"I'm sure you do," Köenig replied, "but I'm afraid that I have supply very few answers to them. I can tell you that you four are not the only newcomers that have arrived in our world recently. Many however have arrived with few memories, in many cases they have not been able to recall their own names. It does appear that all of you have been resurrected from a past life, and have somehow been left in the upper valley by an unknown power. Even the witches are unsure of how the newcomers have arrived."

"Witches?" Uran asked.

"That is what the townspeople call the matriarchal clergy that live in the castle just outside the village walls," Köenig replied. "Some believe that they have magical powers, but the more educated of us are convinced that they have advanced mental powers achieved and concentrated though years of inbreeding, and their use of various potions."

The Bügermeister looked carefully at each of them before speaking again. "It is my responsibility to see for the overall welfare of the people in this village," he explained, "and that includes all strangers that arrive at our gate intending to make our village their home. If you will contribute to the good of this village you are most welcome. If you will only be a burden to us, we may need to turn you away to be banished into the taboo regions along the river to the north. So far, that has not been necessary in the case of the several score of newcomers that have arrived here since the resurrections have started."

"We thank you very much." Cobalt answered.

"Very well, there are two modest dwellings available, you may decide amongst yourselves how to divide them up," Köenig told them. "I will take you there, and then we shall see about some breakfast, I assume you are probably hungry."

"Yes, thank you!" Uran and Titan answered in unison.

Bügermeister Köenig led the four of them to a building some distance from the center of the village. It was one of a cluster of dwellings arranged in a circle, surrounding a smaller building in the middle. They ascended several flights of stairs clinging to the outside of the structure and reached the top. Köenig opened a doorway at the top of the stairs which led to a corridor lined with a pair of doors on either side. He led them to the two at the end of the hallway and opened each one.

"These accommodations are simple, but clean." He told them as they entered the first room. Köenig reached under the shade of a table lamp to find the switch. A small carbon filament bulb inside the lamp gave enough light to see the inside of the room clearly. There was a queen size bed near a window, that was neatly made up with clean sheets and a wool cover. The wooden floor was covered by several woolen throw rugs, the walls were clean, but the paint somewhat faded. A simple water closet in the corner with a sink and a toilet provided the bare requirements for sanitary necessitates. In another corner of the single room flat was a pantry next to a small kitchen area with a sink and a small stove. A table large enough to accommodate two had a small pile of clean dishes and utensils stacked on it.

"The other flat is quite similar to this one," Köenig said. "Later you can pick out some suitable clothing that will fit you in the general store. You'll be given some credits to purchase what you need, and you'll have opportunity enough to earn enough to pay back the loan." He told them.

As they left the first flat the Bügermeister removed two keys from the inside lock of the door and handed then to Atom, who then gave one of them to his brother. "The keys to the other flat should also be in the lock on the inside." Titan walked over to the other room and returned with the keys, giving one to Uran. They closed both doors behind them and followed Köenig down the stairs. "We'll now head over to the Tavern where breakfast is currently being served," Köenig told them. "I haven't eaten yet either. You will be my guests for the morning meal."

As they made their way back towards the center of the village town, Atom noticed a tall woman dressed in a long dark gray dress. She had a veil around her head that hid her hair, but did not cover her face. She wore no makeup, but her skin was pure without any lines, wrinkles, or any distracting marks at all. She had the most hauntingly irredentist green eyes Atom had ever seen. He starred at her for several long seconds before he noticed that both Uran and Cobalt had caught him in the act.

"Who is she?" Atom asked the Bügermeister.

"That is the Lady Rebeca," Bügermeister Köenig said in a warning voice. "She is one of the witches, you would be best to keep as far away from her as possible." Out of the corner of his eye, Köenig could see that the Lady had cast an eye at Atom as if she had already singled him out for some dark purpose.

**T**hey entered the Tavern and the owner nodded to the Bügermeister as they walked in. Köenig motioned his guests towards a table in the corner of the room next to two picture windows that looked out on the main street of the village. Through these windows Atom could see several horse drawn carts slowly plodding down the cobblestone road. Köenig raised his hand and motioned towards the center of the room where the kitchen area was. A large fireplace in the very center of the room was surrounded by many stove tops, and housed several ovens where fresh brown bread was being constantly baked. The tavern proprietor was a short, slightly rotund, balding man wearing a soiled white apron and a tall bakers hat. He sported a long white mustache that hung down under his nose like an upside down 'U'. The man made his way over to their table carrying a tray containing five large mugs with handles, and a good sized teapot. Their server set a mug down in front of each of them and poured each one full with the steaming brown beverage. He then set a large loaf of freshly baked bread in the center of the table, along with a sharp bread knife and a plate with a slab of cold butter. "Enjoy." he said, adding "The grits will be ready in a few minutes," as he hurried off.

**C**obalt picked up the knife and carefully carved the bread into five equal pieces. He took one of the ends for himself and passed the tray to his left. Köenig presented the tray to Uran without removing anything for himself, choosing to wait till each of his guests had their pick. Atom took the other end of the bread, leaving the meatier parts for Titan and the Bügermeister. The butter was thick and rich, the bread chewy and tasty. By the time they had finished that, their server made his way back to them with another tray. He placed large bowls filled with steaming hot grits in front of each of them, and placed a handful of large pewter spoons on the table. "Thank you, Mustachio," Köenig nodded to the proprietor. Cobalt dropped a pat of butter into his bowl, and stirred the melting cow extract into the contents. The five of them ate almost silently, Titan however couldn't help making 'ummm' sounds. Uran ignored him, she figured his reaction was expected for someone that hadn't eaten for an eternity.

**A**fter they had finished their morning's repast Bügermeister Köenig led them outside, after leaving a few coins on the table as payment for their meal. "As promised our next stop will be at the village general store," Köenig told them. They crossed the street and entered the establishment. The shop owner waved to Bügermeister Köenig as they walked in. The man wore a pair of black framed glasses sitting on top of a roundish nose, and sported a red beret hat on his head. The Bügermeister introduced his charges to the shop keeper and handed him a piece of paper, the document was written on the Village official stationary, was an open draft of credit. "Osmau, would you please take care of the new comers, they will need a few changes of clothing," Köenig requested.

The shop keeper pulled a cloth measuring tape from his apron pocket and applied the ruler Atom and his siblings in turn, jotting down their size measurements on a scrap of paper. He disappeared into the back of the shop to rummage though the shelves of goods and soon returned with several piles of goods. "These should fit you well enough." he said. To Atom, Cobalt and Titan he handed several pairs of well crafted jeans, and wool shirts and stockings. To each he also supplied a pair of good work shoes made of fine quality leather. There was also a pair of dress slacks and a matching formal shirt with a simple bow tie. Uran was supplied with similar goods, including a simple but stylish dress and blouse. Each was also given a wool sweater and a suitable water repellent coat and hat. They walked out of the mercantile and the Bügermeister walked back with them to the boarding house. They made a quick run upstairs to store their new goods and then rejoined Köenig who was waiting downstairs for them in the street.

"I'll be taking you around town now to introduce you to some of the masters that you may be working for," the Bügermeister explained. "We need to find out where you will fit in, so you can make yourselves useful in this community. After looking you over I think I have some good ideas where that may be."

**A**s the five of them left the Tavern, the Lady Rebeca watched from afar though a pair of silver field glasses. She felt a bit hopeful that this time she may have found the 'One'. She knew that she would have to test him, but there was time for that. First she'd have to plant the proper subtle suggestions in his mind to push him along the proper path, so to speak. If all went according to plan, and if he responded according to her will, then she would test him. If he survived that and could be transformed by the Teska fruit, she might be able to fulfill Gods final wishes and insure the continuation of all of creation as the universe slowly dissolved.

* * *

_Five._

**B**ügermeister Köenig walked them to the stable in back of the mayor's residence. He started to attempt to hitch the pair of chestnut colored stallions to the surrey, but the spirited animals reared back as he approached them with the rigging. Uran noticed a bushel basket containing a few carrots. She grabbed two of them and approached the pair of equines. "Easy there boys" she said in a soothing voice as she inserted a carrot into each of their mouths. The animals nuzzled her with affection as Köenig approached them. Under Uran's influence they allowed themselves to harnessed to the buggy.

With the team now attached to the surrey, Köenig helped Uran into the back of the vehicle, Titan and Cobalt then climbed in and sat next to their sister. Atom got in the front of the carriage and sat next to the Bügermeister. Herr Köenig took up the reins and flicked them, and the two horses trotted along the cobblestone road. "Our first stop will be at Dr. Mendelssohn's place" he said, "I have a feeling that your sister is exactly the person that he's been looking for."

"I know nothing about medicine." Uran protested.

"But you do seem to have an empathy with animals, don't you?" Köenig replied. "Dr. Mendelssohn is the village veterinarian. All of the farmers depend on him."

They traveled along the cobblestone road for several miles before turning off onto an unpaved country lane. This they took for another quarter of a mile. They were now outside of the village town and in the countryside. They found themselves in front of a small country home site on a plot of land covering two or three acres. A rustic fence surrounded the property, and the sounds and smells of livestock filled the air. The Bügermeister got out of the wagon and assisted Uran out of the back while Atom and the others dismounted on their own. They followed Köenig toward the front porch of the house and the Bügermeister knocked on the door several times.

"I hope the doctor is in," he said.

Almost immediately, the door opened to reveal a tall gentleman wearing an old, but clean pair of suit pants, a starched and pressed shirt, and a dark tie. He had a full head of hair and a long protruding beard on his chin. A pair of spectacles sat on his prominent roman nose. Atom scratched his head as the man somehow looked familiar to him.

"Dr. Mendelssohn, I think I have someone for the apprenticeship you've been asking about," Köenig said. He placed his hand on Uran's shoulder and gently nudged her forward. "She seems to have a way with animals."

Uran followed the doctor into the house. Several hound dogs entered the room from the back of the house where they had just entered from the back yard though a flap door. The mixed breed canines quickly surround Uran, their tails wagging furiously. One of them stood up on its hind legs and laid its front paws on her shoulders and proceeded to lick her face.

"My Gaud!" The doctor laughed, "Old Yeller never greeted a stranger like that since he was a pup. You must be emitting a kind aura that he picked up on. You'll do quite nicely, I would think."

"Well I do like animals." Uran said with a happy face.

"All right then, why don't you start right now, I've got to make my rounds at the farms, you can come with me." The doctor said. "Were are you staying? I'll run you back to your flat at the end of the day."

"I've got them in the old boarding house down the road from the village plaza." the Bügermeister answered."

"That's not bad." Dr. Mendelssohn said.

"Don't worry about me Chi-tan, I'll see you later" Uran told Titan.

The doctor picked up his medical bag and motioned for Uran to come with him. Once outside in the back of the house he hitched a small white horse to a two wheeled cart and helped his new assistant to her seat. Uran waved as they drove off.

Bügermeister Köenig got back into the surrey, and waited for Atom and his brothers to climb on board. He took a good look at Atom, and grabbed his right arm to feel the thickness of his biceps.  
"You look like a strong specimen there young man." He chuckled. "I think I know where you will fit in."

Köenig shook the reins and the team of horses broke into a trot. They road down the country road for a while and turned off of it onto a side path though the grassy valley. A short ways down this path they came to a rustic looking set of well weathered buildings on a large plot of land. There was a barn, a large stable, and a workshop up front by the road. Several other buildings stood on the back of the property. Dark smoke rose from a brick chimney on the side of the workshop building, and the sounds of metal banging on metal could be heard from within.

"I'm going to introduce you to our Blacksmith." He told Atom. "Smitty Emmett Brown is nearing his 60's now and has been looking to take on an apprentice before he retires. I think you'll do just fine."

They jumped out of the surrey and entered the shop. The front of the building was clean, the planking of the wooden floor was covered with a loose coating of straw. Several showcases contained various items of iron and silver work, they appeared to be examples of wares that were for sale. Several horseshoes hung on the walls, along with numerous photographs of horses. Between the showcases was a wooden gate which swung on a pair of spring loaded iron hinges. Behind these was visible the workshop. The heat of a coal fired furnace radiated toward them as the blacksmith pumped the bellows blowing a blast of air into the fire.

Köenig waited patiently as Smitty Brown removed an ingot of orange hot metal from the fire with a long pair of tongs and placed it on his anvil to hammer it into shape. The blacksmith turned his head and then noticed his visitors. He left the iron work on the workbench and walked toward the front of the room.

"Good morning, Smitty," Köenig smiled. "I think I have an applicant for your apprenticeship."

Atom extended his hand, "Pleased to meet you." He told the blacksmith. Smitty Brown may have been in his early 60's, but he was a handsome, and healthy specimen. He had a full head of long white hair that stuck out in every direction. His frame was solid, but not overweight.

Brown took Atom's hand and gripped it. Atom felt the smith's muscular hand squeeze his fingers, and he returned the gesture. For a few seconds the two of them engaged in a brief contest of strength. Finally the blacksmith shook Atom's hand and released it.

"You have a good strong grip." He told Atom. "You'll do nicely. Would you like to get to work at once?"

"Certainly!" Atom smiled.

"Well then, you'll need some suitable garments." Brown told him. He disappeared into a side room, and quickly returned carrying a pile of heavy goods. "Here, go in the back and change."

Atom carried the pile into the back room and examined the goods. A heavy woolen shirt, a pair of double weight cotton jeans, and a leather apron made up the attire. Atom changed his clothes and returned.

"Very good, they fit you well." Brown said. He looked down at Atom's faded red leather boots. "Your footwear should provide good enough protection." He picked up a face shield and placed it on Atom's head. "Let's see you try your hand at making a horseshoe." he suggested.

Atom pulled the shield's dark green glass window over his eyes and and picked up the still glowing bar on the workbench with the tongs. He replaced it into the fire and worked the bellows with the pull chain hanging from the ceiling. A blast of heat erupted from the furnace as the coal fire brightened from the added oxygen. Atom removed the now yellow hot metal from the fire and held it on the anvil with the tongs. He picked up the heavy hammer in his right hand and began to beat the metal into shape. Smitty Brown smiled with approval.

"Not bad." He said. "But let me show you how I do it."

Bügermeister Köenig placed one hand on Cobalt's shoulder and his other on Titans. He led the two of them out of the blacksmith's shop toward the surrey.  
"It looks like your brother will fit in just fine here," He told them. "Now for our final stop. I think I can read you two perfectly, and I know that Engineer Tesla will be able to make use of you both."

They climbed into the carriage and drove off, the sounds of the Smith's hammer on the iron faded in the background.

**K**öenig drove the buggy toward the river and followed it downstream. The sound of the running water grew louder as they approached, as the body of water widened into a lake. Not far ahead was the source of the sound, the spillway of a large dam. Tall towers carried heavy cables into the distance toward the town.

"This is our electric power station." The Bügermeister told them. "Old man Tom Tesla is the only person left in the village town that knows how the system works. It was built many years ago before the dark era of which we have only now begun to recover from. I can see in your eyes that the two of you possess the intelligence to take over from him."

They walked from the surrey onto the top of the dam and followed the narrow path towards the middle of it. Here were a pair of heavy metal doors that led down into the steel and concrete structure. Köenig yelled into an intercom tube near the door, and a faint answer came back. Several minutes later came the sound of the doorway unlatching from the inside. Köenig pulled the door open and they were greeted by the face of a short, balding old man with a large nose, wearing clean bib overalls. Tom Tesla had two puffs of white-gray hair on either side of his head that covered his ears. Cobalt blinked a few times as he tried to recall where he might have seen that face before as it looked rather familiar to him.

"Hello Tom," Köenig smiled. "I've brought you two new assistants. I hope you can train them to take over the maintenance of the system."

"Follow me." the old engineer barked at Cobalt and Titan. The four of them mounted a circular staircase and descended down into the bowels of the dam. As they made their way downstairs the humming of the machinery became louder. Finally they reached the bottom of the stairs and stood on the large floor of the power station. There were at least a dozen turbines driving as many dynamos, the machinery emitted a strong smell of ozone as the open slip ring commutators sparked under their graphite brushes.

"Impressive!" Cobalt yelled. He noticed a panel containing several dozen large meters, and he and Titan walked over to get a better look. He quickly made note of the readings and mentally performed the necessary calculations. "Looks like several tens of megawatts" He said. "Not too shabby for an installation of this type and size. Looks like a bit of power factor correction is needed though."

Titan nodded in agreement "Your efficiency can't be more than 82% the way it is now" he added.

"You seem to know your stuff," the engineer smiled. "Why don't I show you two around and we can start calibrating things. With your help we can probably finish before dinner time."

"Why don't you go back to town." Tom Tesla yelled toward Köenig. "You can come by later to pick them up at the end of the day."

The Bügermeister climbed the long staircase by himself, and walked back over the top of the dam to where the horse drawn surrey was parked. He headed back to town humming a tune to himself. He was happy that the newcomers fit in right away. This was the part of his job that he actually enjoyed.

* * *

_Six._

**I**n the lower levels of the castle on the hill the monks prepared the Holy Elixir and heavenly smoke that the matriarchal priests used in their ritual ceremonies. Both were prepared from the sacred Teska trees that grew in the valley. Only the monks of the castle were permitted to pick the fruit and the leaves of the Teska trees, anyone else who was caught doing so would be subject to the penalty of a horrible death by slow torture.

The fruit of the tree resembled an apple, but it contained a large quantity of a thick syrupy liquid. This liquid would be boiled and filtered, and then allowed to ferment in large vats. After being aged in the cool subterranean vaults under the castle for many months the Elixir would be ready for consumption by the witches in their rituals. The wine like elixir had the power to greatly enhance the power of the mind to see beyond sight, and to reach out to contact God, or so the priesthood believed.

The leaves of the tree were also prized for their mental enhancing properties. They would be left to dry in the sun for a few days after being picked, and then slowly roasted over the smoke of the burning wood of the tree. The leaves were also used to prepare a thin tea that had a milder effect than the elixir which the priests used while meditating. The lumber of the Teska trees was kiln dried and turned on a lathe to manufacture the sacred pipes that the priesthood used to smoke the dried leaves. Used as a kind of tobacco, the carefully prepared Teska leaves enhanced the effect of the Elixir. The lumber that was unsuitable for turning was ground into a fine powder and burned as an incense during meditation.

The monks were the sterile male children of the elder priests. At the top of the order was the Elder Mother. She almost never left the castle, and devoted herself to the task of talking to God and watching the universe. It was her responsibility to govern the world, to pass God's orders down to the people though the sisterhood. The current Elder Mother was well into her second century, nearing the end of her life. It was assumed that she had already selected her replacement from the priesthood who would undergo the transformation after her passing.

The sisterhood itself consisted of Thirteen members, made up of the offspring of the Elder Mother, or her sisters. The sisters were what the common folk referred to as the priests, or more often witches. At the moment there were only twelve fully ordained sisters.

Below the sisterhood, the order consisted of the monks and the Ladyhood. All of the male offspring of the sisterhood were castrated served the order as monks, except for a select few that were left fertile to serve as studs. The females were destined to enter the Ladyhood.

Below the full sisters was the Ladyhood. These younger females were raised into the order and would take their place in order either as full priests in the sisterhood, or as their assistants. The Lady Rebeca was next in line for the sisterhood, she was destined to become the Thirteenth full priest in the order. This would happen within the current season.

The sterile male monks prepared the meals, kept the castle clean, and created the holy Elixirs. When it was time for new blood to enter the order a male from the townspeople would be seduced into providing the required seed. The witches used their enhanced mental abilities, plus their control of their bodies pheromones to lure their studs into performing the required service. The women used their sexual control over the males to insure the continuation of their line.

Only the women had the ability to reach out to contact God. They alone could focus their mental energies with the aid of the Elixir and the holy smoke to see beyond sight. The prophesy did foretell of a male that would come into their midst who would have even greater second and third sight than they did. The pages of their holy texts revealed that their order was set in motion eons ago by such a man, and that yet another one would come along as the universe wound down. Only then would they be able to leap beyond the current existence and into the next. Their vision beyond sight had already told them that the time was near, and that they needed to prepare.

**A**s the sun arrived at its noon station the twelve sisters gathered in the holy sanctuary below the castle. One of the monks entered the darkened room carrying a single candle and a large jug of the holy Elixir. He walked inside the circle of women standing in the center of the room and poured from the jug, filling each of the cups in their outstretched hands fill to overflowing. Another monk entered carrying a large wooden pipe, the bowl of which was filled with the pungent green ground leaves of the Teska tree. The pipe was handed to the Elder Mother who lit it from the flame of a candle that she held. As the sisters drained their cups of the thick Elixir wine, their Mother inhaled from the pipe and blew a large cloud of smoke towards the ceiling. She passed the pipe to her left and then drank her fill of the Elixir. One by one the sisterhood inhaled from the holy pipe as the room became filled with the dense fog of the holy smoke. The intoxicating combination of the ingredients from the Teska trees clouded the eyes of the women, yet their vision became clearer and sharper. They saw beyond their sight, even as the candles burned out and the room was cast into pitch black darkness.

Elder Mother started to chant the prayer of vision and the sisters repeated her words. The women held hands and starred into the beyond though their closed eyes. Together they looked beyond the present and into the past, their sight went beyond the barrier imposed by the great distances that separated the stars. A blue green world orbiting around a yellow sun came into their view, a world accompanied by a smaller rocky one tightly bound into orbit around it. The double planet was the third in the system from the star, one of eight other planets in the system. Their vision was from a far distant corner of the universe, a vision that crossed a trillion light years to reach them. Then they shifted their sightless vision the other way, toward a dark starless void. Here they glimpsed the barely glowing embers of the fading universe, the lifespan of all of creation unfolding before their sightless eyes. As they watched they saw the few remaining stars expand and pull themselves apart into a thin cloud of subatomic particles that rapidly thinned out into non-existence.

It wasn't the first time they had repeated the ritual, and it wouldn't be the last. Each time they endured the pain of the vision they saw just a tiny bit more of the puzzle. Gradually the drug induced trance that held the group together evaporated, and they returned to the present within their own bodies. Elder Mother opened her eyes first and fumbled in the pocket within the folds of her robe for a match and lit it. She applied the flame to a candle and then used that to light several more. As the sisterhood regained their earth bound senses, they mounted the stairs leading up and out of the bowels of the castle to partake of the midday meal, their weekly ritual now over.

* * *

_I don't know how long it will take to get the entire story edited and posted. I'm working on a few other stories at the same time as this one, but I've put off getting this story posted long enough! Enjoy!_


	2. Chapter 2

**All That There Ever Is, or Ever Was or Ever Will Be**

_It's been awhile since I posted the first chapter. Here is the second part of the Novel. I hope you enjoy it, and I'm sorry about having kept you waiting for it._

_Seven__._

**T**he sun now hung above the western end of the sky sending its reddening rays of light over the landscape. Uran road with Dr. Mendelssohn in the front of his buggy back into town after spending the day making house calls throughout the farmland to care for the live stock. She had helped deliver a mare and a calf, had mended a dog from a scrape with a wild boar, and had the unfortunate task of putting down an old horse with a broken leg. As they pulled up to the former boarding house she saw not too far in the distance the rear of the Bügermeister's surrey driving away. Cobalt and Titan were sitting on the steps leading up to their rooms as she got out of the doctor's cart. "I'll be by to get you tomorrow morning," the doctor told her.  
"Perhaps I'll get up early and walk." Uran smiled at him.

"Well then come the way we just went and I might meet you half way." The doctor replied as he flicked the reins and drove off.

Titan took Uran's hand and led her up the stairs. "Let's get our little flat in order, shall we?" he said.

Cobalt followed and put the key in the lock of the other room and opened the door. He turned on the light and closed the door. Entering the water closet, he stripped off his shirt and pants and filled the sink with water. Using a wash cloth and a bar of lye soap he washed the day's grime from his skin. Without a tub or a shower this was the only way to clean up. There was a public bath house elsewhere in town, and some people used the river for bathing, or so he had been told. He'd figure that out later, but for now this would have to do. No sooner than he had dried himself with a towel he heard a key in the lock and the door creaking open. He turned to see Atom enter the room.

"Oh my, you're filthy!" He laughed at his brother.

"I guess I am covered with soot and grime." Atom laughed. "I'm also quite sore from all the work I've done today. I think I made a dozen horseshoes and put half that number on several horses. Smitty Brown gave me quite a workout, but I'm sure he's quite pleased with my work."

"Well go wash yourself up before dinner!" Cobalt told Atom. "There are clean towels in the water closet and good strong soap."

Atom took his time washing, he repeated the ritual several times looking at himself in the mirror as he scrubbed the days work off of his skin. When he was finished the washcloth was several shades of black darker and the towel was almost as grimy. They both selected some clean clothes and changed for dinner.

**N**ext door Uran and Titan went through the same procedure. They left their rooms and walked back downstairs to the street level they found Köenig waiting for them.

"I hope you had a good first day here." The Bügermeister told them. "I almost forgot one thing." He handed each of them several gold and silver coins. "This represents wages for several days of labor." he told them. "From this point on, you'll be on your own and be expected to manage your own affairs of finance. I've heard nothing but good reports from your new employers, which doesn't surprise me because I've always prided myself on being a good judge of character."

"Well thank you." Uran said politely. "Will you be joining us for dinner?" Titan asked.

"No, I'll be dining at home." the Bügermeister replied. "If the dinner menu in the Tavern doesn't fit your fancy, there are several other establishments further down the street."

They started to walk back towards the tavern, and the smell from the cooking attracted Atom. As they walked in, the place was illuminated by the central fireplace where a huge rack of beef was slowly rotating over the flames. "Now that's what I'm having for dinner!" Atom cried out. They found themselves an empty table and sat down. Atom waved at the proprietor who recognized him from earlier in the day. The man walked over to their table and noticed that both Atom and Cobalt were staring at the half cow in the rotisserie pit. "May I assume you'd like some of our roast beef?" he asked.

"Yes," Atom, Cobalt and Titan answered in unison.

"And for the lady?" their server inquired.

"Do you have any beef in a stew?" she asked.

"Yes we do," he answered, "and it's excellent if I may say so myself."

Before they knew it, three plates full of juicy carved beef served with sides of potatoes and greens were set before the guys, and a huge bowl of steaming hot beef stew loaded with carrots, potatoes, onions, and mushrooms was set before Uran. A large pitcher of meed and four large mugs was also delivered. All four of them suddenly realized how famished they really were, having not eaten since the morning. As they finished off their evening repast, four generous slices of pumpkin pie were set down before them. "Our evening meals always include deserts" the tavern master replied, "we're proud of our fresh baked pies here."

Atom dug into his pocket and pulled out one of the gold coins. "Is this enough to pay for our meals?" he asked handing the money to the proprietor.

"More than enough." The man replied. He took the coin and quickly returned dropping about a dozen smaller gold and silver coins in Atom's hand. "Your change." he replied. Atom tried to leave one of the smaller coins on the table as a tip, but the owner pushed it back at him. "The only gratuity we accept here is your satisfaction with our food and service," he insisted.

"My how different this world is from the one we left behind." Atom remarked after the restaurateur departed. "Indeed." Cobalt answered. "There is quite a lot I need to discover." he added.

* * *

_Eight._

**G**radually, the four of them settled down into their own routines. Each of them found themselves totally happy working where the Bügermeister had placed them. Each of them could not imagine themselves ever being anywhere else. For the moment, they let the memories of their previous lives fade into the dark recesses of their minds and soon it was as if they had always been living in this new world.

**T**he blacksmith shop where Atom labored covered several acres of land and consisted of several buildings that he had not seen on his first day. Smitty Brown eventually led Atom round and showed him the entire layout. "Years ago I had several assistants working here, and we did a lot more than just blacksmithing." Brown explained. "Out back there is a foundry for the casting of metal and the smelting of raw ore into usable material. The equipment still works, but it has fallen into some disuse. With some careful restoration the equipment would be able to produce items of gold, silver, pewter, copper, brass, bronze, and of course iron."

"Yes, I saw some items other than iron in the show cases at the front of the shop." Atom had remarked to his employer.

"True, but I've not done such work for some time now." Brown sighed.

There was also a small sawmill, lumber yard, and wood working shop out in the rear of the property. "The Artisan that worked in this shop with me passed away last year." Brown told Atom. There are other wood shops elsewhere in the township, but I think we turned out a better product."

Atom quickly learned the blacksmith's trade. He tinkered around with the foundry equipment, restoring it to operation with some advice from Smitty Brown. In his spare time he gradually got the wood shop up and running again as well and taught himself how to use the tools. About a month and a half after they had arrived in this new world, Smitty Emmett Brown handed the place over to Atom.

"You've learned everything I could teach you at quite a rapid pass, Atom." He said. "I've never had an apprentice that took to this work like you have, it's almost as if you were a blacksmith in a former life or something. Anyway it's time I retired, I've gotten too old for this line of work." He handed the keys to Atom saying, "The place is yours now, you can move in into the dwelling adjacent to the shop if you like."

"But where will you stay?" Atom asked.

"I'll be living with my brother by the river." Smith said. "He's a few years older than I am and I need to look after him now, as he's now no longer able to care for himself. I've got enough stashed away to take care of both of us for some time." Before Atom could object Smith added, "When it's time you'll pass this place on to your successor just as did, I inherited it from the man who had it before me."

Atom accepted the keys and gave Brown a long hard hug. Over the next week he gradually moved out of the room that he and Cobalt were sharing, leaving the place to his brother.

**C**obalt and Titan didn't need very much instruction on how to run the power plant. Old man  
Tom Tesla knew the workings of the machinery like the back of his hand, but it was clear that he didn't really understand the physics behind the operation of it. Everything he knew, he had learned by groat from someone who had been in charge before him. Likely the chain of command had been passed down like that for over a century. Cobalt had seen the shop where the equipment was repaired and spare parts were stored. While the equipment was reasonably well maintained, the supply of spare parts was dwindling and the technology was no further advanced than that of early 20th century Earth. Tom Edison, Nicolai Tesla, and George Westinghouse would all be at home here.

There was a small factory near the power plant about a quarter kilometer down the river from the dam that manufactured light bulbs using equipment that was barely out of the stone age (or so Cobalt thought). Bulbs were blown by hand, and filaments were made from carbonized fibers. Simple mechanical and mercury bubble vacuum pumps exhausted the air from the bulbs. The process left much to be desired, and resulted in low efficiencies.

"We've got to restore this equipment, and modernize things." Cobalt told Titan. "It seems that this world was once a quite vibrant society, but it has slipped back into a kind of dark age. If we hadn't arrived here when we did, the village town would soon be lighting their homes with candles again."

Not far from the power plant was an abandoned facility that had probably once been some kind of laboratory and place of learning. Here Cobalt found tools and instruments for scientific research in multiple fields of endeavor. One section of one of the huge buildings contained apparatus for chemical research (though much of it resembled an alchemists laboratory). There was what appeared to be a medical science facility with microscopes and surgical equipment, most unused for scores of years. Another wing housed an ancient telescope under a domed roof that hadn't been opened for so long that the mechanics were rusted stiff.

Yet another building seemed to be some kind of school. There were classrooms and lecture halls all covered with layers of dust. The place had been abandoned for some time. The last part of the facility that they discovered was a small dormitory facility. One of the larger set of rooms was in decent condition, with plumbing that seemed repairable. Cobalt decided to renovate the place and move in.

"I want to live near this facility so I can devote myself to it full time." He explained to Titan. "I want to explore this facility and discover what was abandoned here so long ago. I need get the research labs working again so I can learn just what happened here, and exactly where we are. I'll need your help."

**S**omewhere between the Village Town and Dr. Mendelssohn's country animal hospital, Uran and Titan ran across a small abandoned estate.  
"The family that owned this property were friends of mine." The doctor told Uran. "They didn't have any children, and neither one of them had any siblings either. Before they passed away they willed the place to me, but I have no use for it. There's not much land here for a decent farm with livestock, but you could grown enough food to make by on."

"True," Uran said. "but, I'd like to continue to work with you, if you will have me."

"Are you kidding?" the Doctor laughed. "You're a natural Veterinarian. It's gotten such that I'd be lost without your help."

Having remembered dying together, Uran and Titan felt more like sole mates than siblings. They mentioned to Dr. Mendelssohn that they desired to marry, and his reaction was quite positive.

"I never thought you two could possibly be brother and sister." He said. "I have an eye for genetics you know, and you two are no closer related blood wise than maybe third cousins at best. I'm sure the Bügermeister would be more than happy to perform the ceremony when you are ready."

The doctor helped them fix up the old estate and they soon moved in.

* * *

_Nine._

**T**he Lady Rebeca had watched the newcomers from a distance. While she was certain that Atom was the one who would fulfill the ancient prophecy, there was something about all four of them that attracted her attention. In fact, she thought that there was something very strange about the four newcomers that she had yet to place a finger on. One of the powers that the matriarchal priests had was the ability to see the linage of a persons soul. The priests believed, actually they **knew** that everyone who had ever lived had been reincarnated many times and their vision beyond sight enabled them to track the paths of anyone's past lives. These four didn't seem to **have **any past lives. Atom and Uran did seem to have a trace, but theirs was very faint to her, and she couldn't read them.

Cobalt seemed to have the intelligence and the tenacity to solve the ancient puzzle and open the vaults of time. It seemed to her that with Titans help the two of them could be directed to do just that, and for the past few months she had been scheming on how to nudge them along in that direction. They would have to think that it was their idea of course, but that would be easy enough to do. If Atom was truly the 'ONE', his destiny would be to discover the the path ahead. He would require his brother's help to make sense of his discovery, and that would awaken the race memory that the priesthood would need.

As for Uran, well she might be destined to serve the sisterhood, but that decision would in the end be up to her. Rebeca didn't yet see clearly where she fit in to the ancient master plans, but she was certain that would become clear to her eventually.

**R**ebeca sat in the fading light of the day as the suns last light beamed into her window. She sipped the thin amber tea of the Teska leaves and let its intoxicating power enter her senses. The tea was the weakest of the mind altering drugs that the order distilled from the holy tree.

More powerful than the tea was the smoke of the tobacco made from the same leaves, but prepared in a totally different fashion. The Elixir of life wine which was made from the fruit of the tree was even more potent, it would give the user full vision beyond sight. The use of both the smoke and the Elixir was reserved only for the fully anointed priests, of which Rebeca was not yet one of.

Eating the fruit of the tree was something that one didn't do, for the Teska fruit was such a powerful hallucinogen that only the Elder Mother, or a full sister destined to become one, could survive the effects of its deadly influence. The ancient prophecy declared that one day there would come a man who would eat the fruit of the Teska tree and not succumb to its poison. He would be transformed into the father figure that would lead the order to survive the fading of the current universe and live on in the next. He would also provide the seed for the birth of the soul that would become the center of the next universe. That was the destiny that she saw in Atoms future, but she still had yet to test him and prove that he was the one.

As the teas hallucinogenic chemicals entered her blood stream, Rebeca stared at the last bit of the sun's orb that was still peeking above the horizon and closed her eyes to enable her inner sight take hold of her vision. She strained to see the future, but it was still a blur to her. The ceremony that would induct her into the sisterhood was now only weeks away. Once she had access to the Elixir of life and the smoke of vision she would have access to the full power of the priesthood, then she would be able to know what path she must follow. First, however she had to put her imprint on Atom so that he would be bound to her and would follow her subtle suggestions. It was time.

* * *

_Ten._

**A** pink-green glowing mist filled the upper valley in the predawn hours. The strange lights hadn't been seen for several months since Atom and the others had been resurrected above the Village Town. Lady Rebeca woke from a disturbing dream and viewed the upper valley just as the strange lights had begun to fade. More newcomers were about to arrive, she wondered who they would be and what they would bring.

**T**he last thing they had remembered was their escape. Wanted by the police in several countries the two of them had somehow found each other and pooled their talents to elude the law long enough to stow away on a space ship heading away from Earth. Both of them had landed in jail multiple times thanks to Atom's meddling in their affairs, and they had been glad to be rid of him. Fate, or was it karma, wasn't kind to them, the ship they had secreted themselves on began to break up shortly after they had left Earth. The crew took to the escape pods leaving them to fend for themselves. It was a slow death as the ships energy and food stocks were used up and the cold of space began to creep inside.

Rock was the first to awaken in his new body. He opened his eyes to see the indigo colored first light of dawn overtaking the blackness as the few visible stars faded from view. Sitting up in the soft clover grass he noticed his companion in death starting to still from his slumber a few meters away.

**L**amp rubbed his eyes and sat up. There was something cool and wet sitting in his lap. He looked down at the large bullfrog that announced itself with a loud croak. Lamp almost jumped out of his skin upon seeing the amphibian, but he quickly recovered his nerves and looked around. He spotted Rock behind him, and their eyes met for the first time in eons.

"I thought we died," Lamp said.

"Well, you look rather good for a dead man," Rock said, "about 60 years younger too."

"You don't look a day over 25 yourself." Lamp came back. "Where the hell are we and how did we get here?" He added.

"Don't ask me, I don't have a clue." Rock replied.

As the sun made its first appearance over the horizon the road leading into the Village Town became visible, and the lights from the Town plaza became obvious.

"Looks like some signs of civilization, down that way." Lamp pointed.

"Maybe we can get something to eat there, I'm hungry." Rock added.

The two former inmates brushed themselves off and started to walk down the hill and towards the road leading to the Town.

**B**ügermeister Köenig woke from a fitful dream before the sun had yet made its first appearance of the day. Instead of coming into the village in person to warn him of the expected new arrivals the witch Rebeca had planted her message in his dream. This was quite disturbing to him, he almost felt like he had been raped having his thoughts invaded like that. It wasn't the first time that the a member of the priesthood had used their mental powers to deliver a message to him in that way, and he doubted it would be the last. "Why can't they just deliver their damned instructions in person, or in writing?" he muttered to himself as he dressed.

Köenig didn't notice the Lady Rebeca who was standing just inside the gated entrance to the Village. She watched as the two young men walked down the cobblestone road and entered the town. Right away she sensed that these two were different, and that they might be a problem. Mentally she shared this thought with the Bügermeister, who perceived it as his own realization. As Lamp and Rock entered the plaza they were met by the Bügermeister who was the first person to walk up to them in greeting.

"Welcome to our Village, gentlemen." he said offering his hand in friendship as he always did. "I'm Herr Köenig, the Bügermeister of this village."

Lamp hesitated for a few moments as he studied the well dressed man who stood in front of him and Rock before he responded. "Pleased to meet you too." He said. "I'm not exactly sure how I got here or why. Maybe you can help me and my partner out with some information." He said. "You can call me Lamp, and the fellow with me goes by the name Rock."

Rock then walked up and simply smiled. "You got anything to eat in this place," he asked, "I'm famished!"

"That's often the case with the newly awakened," Köenig answered. "I know you are confused, but I'm afraid I don't have many answers for you. For nearly a year now we've had strangers walking out of the upper valley claiming to have returned here from the dead. Most remember their names, many don't remember much else."

Lamp and Rock looked at each other, and then at the Bügermeister. "We remember dying in a spaceship, but not much else," they said almost in unison.

"I'm not quite sure what that is, but I've heard similar stories before," Köenig replied. "If you two gentlemen will follow me towards the Tavern we can see about doing something to satisfy your hunger pains."

Lamp and Rock nodded and they followed Köenig towards the source of a delicious smell that they suddenly became aware of. Köenig led them to his usual table and motioned over to a server. Soon they were enjoying steaming cups of coffee and rich brown bread with fresh butter. Lamp ordered a large plate of eggs and bacon, while Rock had two bowls of hot grits and hash browns.

With their hunger now in the past, the Bügermeister walked them over to the General store where he requisitioned some clothing for his two charges. He then marched them over to the boarding house and assigned them lodging. Though they didn't know it, Lamp and Rock now occupied the rooms that Atom, Uran, Titan and Cobalt had recently vacated. Something told the Bügermeister that he'd better let each of them have their own room, a luxury that he was able to give them at the moment. After the two mens housing needs had been taken care of, Köenig told them to follow him so he could find them suitable employment.

"You expect us become slaves?" Lamp blurted out.

"No, I expect you to make yourselves useful," Köenig told them. "You will be paid well for your labor, just like everyone else in this village. You can always seek other arrangements later on, but you are expected to support yourselves, we have no beggars here. Anyone that doesn't contribute to the general welfare is banished to the taboo regions north of here."

"I haven't seen any police in this place." Lamp said, "How do you expect to enforce such policies."

"We don't need police, because what we have to live under is far worse." the Bügermeister told them. I beg you do not tempt the wrath of the clergy, you will not survive the encounter."

Köenig led the two men to the village stable where he introduced them to Tidus Moony who ran the livery. As soon as they entered the establishment, Rock found himself being nuzzled by a pair of three year old mares. He found himself scratching them behind their ears and both he and the equines seemed to enjoy the encounter.

"My, you seem to have quite the horse sense." Moony told Rock.

"You know I seem to remember always wanting a pony as a kid." Rock replied. "Don't think I ever got one."

Tidus handed Rock a hand brush. "Here, slip this on your hand and try combing them down. They love being groomed."

The brush fit on his hand like a glove, the strap went over the top of his hand and the back of the brush fit nicely into his palm. Rock started to comb the animals hair. He seemed to know exactly which way to brush them so as to not cause any discomfort.

Moony handed Lamp a pitchfork. "Why don't you try your hand and bailing some hay." he said. "Remove enough from that large pile in the corner of the stable and fill each horses pen with a good meal."

"I suppose you'll want us to shovel horse shit as well." Lamp grumbled.

"Of course." Moony laughed. "If you're careful it's not a very messy job, and you'll get used to the smell."

"Right." Lamp said.

"Oh come on Lamp, it's not so bad." Rock said. "I rather like these animals. Don't be such a grouch!"

Köenig gave Tidus Moony a concerned glance, but the livery stable master didn't seem concerned.

"Don't worry about a thing, Herr Köenig," he said. "These two will work out just fine. They're a bit rough around the edges, but they will fit in. Trust me."

Köenig shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the stable leaving Lamp and Rock in Moony's capable hands.

* * *

_Eleven._

**A**tom lifted the heavy crucible loaded with the molten iron with the aid of the hoist. He dragged the heavy glowing container of the 3000 degree liquid metal towards the waiting sand molds and carefully tipped the spout pouring the yellow hot metal into the openings in the flasks. He'd quickly learned the job of a sand crab. Ramming up a wooden flask full of the moist gritty green sand, forming a mold in the stuff from a wooden or plaster form, setting up the sprue channels for the liquid metal, and spooning off the dross from the top of the crucible before pouring the metal into the molds.

With the four flasks now full, Atom dumped the excess metal into an ingot mold so as not to let the remaining material harden in the bottom of the crucible and possibly crack it. The pots he used to melt metal in were themselves made in the same furnace that melted the raw metal. Atom had made them on a potter's wheel, or formed them using wooden molds from clay mixed with grog and foundry sand. The smallest held just a few pounds of molten metal, the largest nearly a quarter ton.

It would take several hours for the newly poured metal to cool, but by dinner time he would be able to crack open the molds and extract the replacement bearings for the observatory dome. Cobalt would be pleased.

**O**ld man Tom Tesla was more than pleased with Cobalt and Titans work. In the span of less than two months since they had arrived, they had fine tuned the operation of the power station. Old arching contacts had been replaced, over loaded circuits had been bridged with heavier wiring, and the tired relays that kept tripping for no reason were repaired or replaced. The village folk ceased complaining about frequent black outs, and for the first time in anyones memory it was possible to extend the service area of the power grid to parts of the countryside that had to be lit by tallow candles and animal fat lamps.

During his exploration of the countryside, Cobalt had located a rich vein of Wolframite, and he was now working on a process for separating the tungsten metal from the iron and manganese it also contained. He hoped to soon produce light bulbs with double the efficiency and output of the ancient carbon filament lamps now in use.

Now that the power plant was in much better shape and didn't require his constant attention, Cobalt was able to devote some of his time to getting the science laboratory facility into usable condition. The first item he put his mind to was the observatory. The old refracting telescope was actually in decent shape, but its bearings and clock drive would have to be taken apart and repaired. The optical tube appeared to be in decent alignment, but the objective lens had become covered with a film of mold and would need to be removed from the instrument and re-polished. This would have to be done carefully so as to preserve the optical surfaces, but Cobalt intended to optically test the objective anyway.

The big problem was that the dome roof was frozen stuck and couldn't be opened. He and Atom had studied the problem and determined that they'd have to jack up the dome and replace several of the frozen bearings. Cobalt took careful measurements of the old parts and modeled them in clay, adjusting the actual size to account for shrinkage of the clay when it was fired, and that of the metal that the new parts would be cast in. He'd given the ceramic models to his brother who promised to cast replacements in the foundry. Tonight, with any luck they would finally get the old dome operating again.

The two brothers met in the tavern for dinner. Cobalt insisted that he was buying, and he ordered a huge rack of lamb for the two of them. As they ate their dinner Atom stared across the room at a pair of men that somehow looked familiar to him. Both wore eye glasses, one sported a pair of dark sunglasses, the other one had clear lenses that were obviously intended to correct a myopic condition. Atom shrugged his shoulders and gave up trying to remember where he had last seen those two. Like most of the new comers he had only partial recall of his previous existence. He could remember most of the events in his past lives, but some of the fine details were missing.

"Why are you so interested in getting that old telescope working again?" Atom asked his brother between bites of lamb.

"Well besides the fact that it is a classic refracting telescope very similar to those once made by Joesph Fraunhofer and Alvin Clark," Cobalt replied, "the telescope and the spectroscopic equipment will enable me to figure out just where we really are, both in space and time."

"What's so important about that?" Atom asked.

"I hope to figure out just how far in the future we are from where we were." Cobalt said. "I'd like to know how far from old Earth we are as well."

"Does it matter?" Atom asked. "In all probability Earth doesn't even exist anymore anyway."

"True." Cobalt sighed. "But I'd like to think that our being here means something. Why were we reborn, and why in flesh and blood form? Who did this?"

"You're asking questions that old religions never could answer." Atom told him. "Do you want to find God?"

"No." Cobalt answered. "I think that would disappoint me. But I would also like to know if we are alone. Isn't that what mankind always wanted to know?"

"That is a deep philosophical question." Atom said. "I didn't know you were interested in that sort of stuff."

"Actually it's mostly just my scientific curiosity, but also a chance to finally answer a question that cosmologists have been trying to answer for so many years." Cobalt said.

"What question is that?" Atom wondered.

"How it all will end. It's been known how the universe came into being since the middle of the 20th century, though concrete proof didn't come along for some years after." Cobalt began. "The Big Bang theory was an established fact by the beginning of the 21st century, but there remained several theories on how the universe would end. Many thought that the expansion of the universe first discovered by Hubble would eventually slow and even reverse, with the universe falling back on itself in a big crunch. It was eventually discovered that there wasn't enough mass in the universe to halt the expansion, in fact the expansion was accelerating. Since accepted theories of gravity didn't allow for that various fudge factors were added to equations leading to the theoretical existence of both dark matter and dark energy."

"Sounds weird to me." Atom said, with a mouthful of potatoes.

"Perhaps that's because you were never interested in Astronomy and Cosmology," Cobalt replied. "Anyway adding those fudge factors resulted in several consequences. Depending on the values that a few resulting constants would take the, universe might now have several different fates in store for it. Given one set of values the expansion would continue forever with the universe gradually cooling off and becoming quite dark as entropy takes over. Change those constants slightly and the expansion will eventually slow down with somewhat the same effect, but the universe ends up being smaller and less dark because the galaxies don't become so separated that light can't travel between them. Finally there is one other possibility, that the expansion continues to accelerate as dark energy dominates and everything rips apart. All matter down to the subatomic level disintegrates and there is nothing left but a very thin soup of the most basic particles of energy which finally disappear."

"Now that sounds depressing." Atom said. "Any ideas which of those scenarios will play out, and when?"

"I won't know until I can get the telescope working and gather some observational data." Cobalt said. "Give what I can see with my naked eyes, I do think we are fairly far along the expansion with only red dwarf stars left, at lest in this part of the universe."

**L**ater that evening in the ancient observatory, the two of them labored at repairing the operation of the dome. Cobalt carefully examined the replacement parts that his brother had cast in the foundry and pronounced them perfect. They climbed up to the top of the dome on separate ladders and inserted a pair of jacks between the top of the wall and the dome. Atom had cast the screw jacks from the best grade of metal that he could find, and had lubricated them using vegetable oil mixed with animal fat. Petroleum based lubricants were unknown in this world, so more natural products were substituted.

It took them several hours to lift the dome one section at a time, remove the rusted parts and replace them with the newly cast ones. By the time they were ready to quit for the night they had installed all of the replacements that Atom had brought with him. Cobalt would still have to get the gearing system repaired before he would be able to operate the dome, but they had just finished the hardest part.

**A**s the two brothers packed it in for the night and put their tools away Cobalt suddenly face palmed with a look of embarrassment. "Crap!" he said, "I almost forgot to tell you that we've been invited for dinner tomorrow evening. Uran and Titan are having their house warming, they finally have the place respectable enough to invite company over."

"You know, they're a bit crazy." Atom laughed. "Like we would even notice a sloppy household. Both of them have seen the mess I live in next door to the shop. And while your place is a magnitude of order cleaner than mine, it takes first prize for clutter. How could they keep a worse household than either of us?"

"That's the difference between men an women I guess." Cobalt laughed. "Every time I walked over there with Titan to follow him home he made me stand outside the door. Uran wouldn't let me see the inside of the place because she would be too embarrassed to let me see the mess."

"Well I'm glad they got the place fixed up to their satisfaction." Atom replied. "It's been almost two weeks since they had their marriage ceremony, and they've been spending their honeymoon doing house work?"

"Now that they've gotten that out of the way I hope that they actually DO have a proper honeymoon," Cobalt said. "I don't think they've even consummated their marriage yet. I've tried to convince them that they have nothing to worry about, I'm certain that genetically they are no closer related than second cousins just as the doctor surmised."

"Now THAT'S funny!" Atom chuckled.

"I'll stop by the blacksmith shop about two hours before to remind you," Cobalt said, "Otherwise, knowing you, you'll forget, or show up in those filthy clothes you wear in the shop and never wash."

"You're probably right about that." Atom laughed. "I'll be expecting you then, unless I forget."

* * *

_Twelve._

**T**he day had grown late as the Lady Rebeca changed out of the traditional robes that the clergy in training wore, and into her country riding outfit. She knew that she would miss the freedom of riding her horse though the countryside once she had joined the ranks of the priesthood in a few more days. She would still be allowed to exit the castle and visit the countryside, but it would be in an enclosed carriage with one of the monks holding the reins. Of course there would be the option of sneaking out incognito, which was something she knew some of the priests did, but would never admit.

Rebeca applied some makeup to her face and then put on a veiled hat. A pair of tall leather riding boots, and matching gloves completed her outfit. Finally she applied the cologne distilled from the pit of the Teska tree fruit. Its aroma had the power to entrance the male mind and bend its will. She hoped that she wouldn't be recognized, but she doubted that Atom would realize who she was, especially with her ability to cloud his mind by the use of her voice.

She entered the stable in the back of the courtyard adjacent to the the rear of the castle and approached her favorite steed. The white mare nuzzled her face when she entered its stall. As if on cue, she removed the carrot that was in the back pocket of her long pants and held it up in front of the animals face. The horse snatched the orange tuber from her hand and happily began to chew on it.

Rebeca bent down and carefully lifted the horses left rear leg. She used a pair of pliers to remove all but two of the nails holding the shoe to the animals hoof. "I'm sorry about this girl, but I need for us to visit the blacksmith and put him to work." The mare nodded its head and whinnied as if she understood exactly what Rebeca had in mind, and agreed with the plan.

**A**tom looked up from the anvil when he heard the clip-clop of a horse entering the stable. His ears could recognize the sound of the missing shoe, and he knew what task he would be asked to perform. He waited for the rider to walk around to the entrance of the blacksmith shop before leaving the work area for the reception area up front. The tell tale smell of a womans perfume reminded him of how he probably looked so he first walked over to the corner of the shop where a sink and a mirror were available. He quickly washed the furnace soot from his face and hands, and dragged a comb through his hair, making sure that the two cowlicks were standing up straight at attention.

"It seems my horse has thrown a shoe," Rebeca told the blacksmith, "I guess I was lucky that it happened not too far from your shop."

Atom smiled as he gazed into Rebeca's green eyes. "I'd say we were both in luck." He cooed back. "Let me measure the hoof and I'll start to prepare you a new shoe at once."

Atom walked out the rear of the shop towards the stable where the mare was standing He lifted the animals rear leg and quickly measured for the size of the required shoe. Returning to the shop he found a suitable blank that was close to the required size. It would take some heating and beating with the hammer to enlarge the malleable metal to the correct size.

**The **Lady Rebeca watched as the blacksmith pulled the glowing orange hot metal from the furnace with his tongs and brought it to the anvil to hammer it to size. She admired his muscular arms dripping with sweat, as he lifted the heavy hammer and slammed it repeatedly onto the anvil. As he turned to replace the metal back into the furnace to reheat it, his profile was presented and she could see his bare back, which not covered by the heavy leather apron he wore for protection from the heat. Her eyes feasted on the outline of the well defined muscles under the skin of his hairless back. Despite the dark goggles that he wore to protect his eyes from the glare of the incandescent metal in the furnace, she could see that he had a cute face. His dark colored hair was cut short, except for two pointy tufts that stuck out at behind from diagonal points on the back of his head. Under the legs of his trousers she could see the bottoms of a well worn pair of red leather boots.

The blacksmith bent over to dunk the horseshoe into a bucket of water to quench the hot metal. He removed his dark goggles and the leather apron, revealing his bare barrel chest. If he was aware of Rebeca staring at the 'six pack' of his well developed abdomen muscles, his facial expression did not reveal it.

Atom measured the shoe and found that he had done his work at the anvil perfectly. He held the U shaped iron in his right hand and returned to the front of the shop.  
"This will fit your mare perfectly, madam," he said, "I'll go put it on your horse now."

"Thank you." the Lady Jessica said applying the modulation to her voice. She listened carefully to the mental feedback from Atom's thoughts as she reached out to him with her mind. She was certain that he was responding to her subtle suggestions. From the tone of his mental patterns she was certain that he had the untapped abilities that the prophecy foretold the 'One' would have.

Atom walked though the doorway that connected his workshop with the stables, the horseshoe in his left hand. He reached into a bushel basket just inside the entrance to the stable and pulled out a large carrot. He slipped the horseshoe into the rear left pocket of his jeans and slowly approached the mare. The large brown horse whinnied when it saw him.

"Take it easy girl," he said, "this won't hurt a bit." He offered the orange tuber to the equine, which greedily snatched it from his hand. The smith scratched the large animal between its ears with his right hand, forming a bond with his patient. He then slowly bend down and lifted the mare's front leg and removing the shoe from his pocket, lined it up on the horse's hove. It only took him a few minutes to nail the U-shaped iron onto the animal's foot.

The smith patted the mare as he stood up and took hold of the halter rope to lead the animal out of the stable. The mare increased her pace once she saw Rebeca waiting just outside the stable. The horse nuzzled the woman's face with its nose.

"You have a way with horses, Atom." Rebeca cooed, reaching into her purse and removing several gold coins. "Will this be enough payment?"

The smith held out his hand as the lady placed the coins into it, she lightly rubbed her finger tips across his palm to apply the 'touch'.

"Yes." he said, pocketing the money, and helping Jessica up into the saddle. Rebeca looked down from her mount with a wanting glint in her eyes, she licked her lips and blew a kiss in Atom's direction as she coaxed her horse into a spirited trot. Atom watched as the lady rode away, and proceeded to wipe the dirt and sweat off his face with a half clean rag.

**C**obalt had arrived at the blacksmith shop just in time to witness his brothers final business transaction with the Lady Rebeca. Despite her being dressed in her country attire, Cobalt knew exactly who and what she really was.

"You do realize that the witch is sweet on you."

Atom turned to see Cobalt standing behind him. "No, she's just admiring my body," Atom told his brother, "And what do you mean by the witch remark?"

"That woman is a member of the matriarchal clergy," Cobalt replied, "She's the one we first saw in the town square the day we arrived, didn't you recognize her? The Bügermeister warned us about them. It's obvious to me that she has plans for you."

"Jealous?" Atom asked.

"If things were different I could be." Cobalt replied. "But you need to be careful."

"Don't worry about me," Atom replied. "I was just doing the lady a favor."

"By the way, you look filthy." Cobalt said, changing the subject, "You'd better get cleaned up and change your clothes. We have a dinner invite tonight, remember?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that." Atom said. "What time are Uran and Titan expecting us?"

Cobalt pulled on the chain attached to his belt to remove the watch from his pocket. He opened the lid to look at the face of the timepiece, and then closed it, replacing it back into his pocket.

"You've got about an hour." he answered.

"Right." Atom answered, He ran over to the building next to the workshop that housed his dwellings. He grabbed a small basket and neatly placed a clean pair of underwear, trousers, and a new shirt into the basket. He dropped a towel and a bar of soap on top of that and walked out.

"I'll meet you at their house," Atom yelled as he ran toward the river to bathe.

**It **was a good ten minute run from the blacksmith shop through the nearby meadow toward the river. Atom placed the basket on the ground near the shore. He removed his boots and trousers, and then his black underwear which he rolled up into a ball and placed on the ground next to the basket. Grabbing the bar of soap, he ran naked into the river up to his waist and started to wash the filth from his skin. After repeating the process several times he tossed the soap back to the shore and dived under the water. Swimming with his eyes open, he watched as a school of small iridescent fish swam away from a larger predator. He enjoyed the cool water flowing past his bare skin for a few more minutes, and then made his way out of the water. He reached the spot where he had laid his clothes, but the basket was now missing. From a few yards to the left, he heard the laughing whinny of a horse.

**The **Lady Rebeca rode her horse through the meadow from the blacksmith's shop on her way back to the castle. She usually went this way to allow the mare a drink from the river's edge, but this time she had a purpose. As she approached the waterway she spotted Atom swimming in the river, as she knew she would. She tied her horse up out of sight behind a stand of small trees and quickly ran toward the spot where Atom had left his belongings. She picked up the basket and crept back toward her hiding place. While waiting for him to exit from the river, she reached up under her skirt and removed her silken panties. It was time to put her plans into motion, time to dig her hooks into the newcomer and turn him to her will.

"Looking for these?" Rebeca asked.

Atom turned his head to the left and saw Jessica standing near the tall shrubbery holding his clothes. He smiled a devilish grin and walked toward her. Rebeca's control over her glands released powerful pheromones which reacted upon Atoms brain. The powerful aroma, combined with the look on her face, had the effect on him that Rebeca wanted as Atom was attracted to her charms.

"Come here and kiss me," she ordered.

With a smile on his face Atom raised his arms slightly and accepted the lady's embrace as she pulled his head toward hers and pressed their lips tightly together. Almost a head taller than Atom, Rebeca had to stoop slightly down to reach him. Their lips met in a long French kiss. Rebeca ran one hand behind his back gently feeling the strong muscles along the curve of his spine. She ran the other hand through his hair, twisting the long stands of his two cowlicks.

Still locked in their embrace, Atom felt Rebeca's hand slowly travel down the length of his spine, gently tickling him as it went. Rebeca's mind reached into Atom's and willed for him to make love to her and he complied with her wishes. Under her control their pleasure lasted for nearly half an hour until they finally separated from each other.

There, it had been done, the sexual act had achieved the desired effect. Rebeca could read in Atoms brain patterns that she had managed to imprint herself upon him, and that she would now be able to mentally push him along to do her bidding. Soon she would be able to test him, and hopefully transform him into the One who would insure the continuation of creation.

Rebeca used Atoms towel to dry gently dry his body, before releasing his mind from her control. Atom suddenly noticed how late is was getting, the sun was now nearly at the horizon. He dressed quickly, knowing he'd be late for the dinner date with his siblings, though he suspected that Cobalt would figure out exactly what had been going on.

Atom helped Rebeca back into the saddle. She gently kicked the animal in its sides to spur it on into a gallop. Turning her head she blew a kiss towards the blacksmith, and then turned in the direction of the castle. All had gone according to her plans, the sexual encounter had imprinted her will in the male's mind, Atom would be her slave and would do whatever she required of him.

Atom picked up the basket, now containing his soiled clothes and towel, and started to jog back toward the blacksmith shop. His mind whirled about as if he was in daze. Suddenly he remembered where he was supposed to be and realized how late he was. He quickened his pace and hurried back to his dwelling to freshen up. With any luck he'd be less than a half hour late at Titan and Uran's house for dinner.

* * *

_Thirteen._

**Atom **knocked on the door to the cottage, and was immediately greeted by Titan. "Welcome cousin" he said. It had taken Atom a while to accept the idea of losing a brother and gaining a cousin, but he knew that it made Titan and Uran feel more comfortable, so he quickly got used to the idea. Besides, it had been Cobalt's idea.

"Sorry I'm late," Atom said, "I ran into a friend and was detained."

Cobalt bit his tongue and kept quiet, he was able to guess and knew damn well what had detained his brother.

"Don't worry about it," Titan said, "You're actually right on time. Uran's ESP must have told her exactly when you'd arrive and she timed dinner perfectly."

Atom joined Cobalt who was already siting at the diner table. Titan helped his wife bring the food to the table. They started with a garden salad consisting of fresh greens, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and green onions, all grown in the community gardens that Uran and Titan helped cultivate. The main course was a roast duckling, one of the foul that the couple were raising on the acres of land that they farmed. For desert, Uran had baked a huge apple spice pie.

Though each of them had been able to enjoy food in their previous lives, they still hadn't gotten used to the sensations of taste, texture, and smell that their new bodies enabled them to perceive. Every meal was an adventure, they ate slowly so as to enjoy every everything to the maximum extent.

They finished the meal off with large cups of green tea. As soon as the last of them had drained his or her glass, Atom and Cobalt helped to gather the dishes and bring them into the kitchen to be washed.

**Eventually** the hour grew late. Atom and Cobalt said their goodbyes and walked outside into the cool night air.

"You're welcome to spend the night at my place." Cobalt told his brother. "It's a lot more comfortable than that dirty room of yours in back of the blacksmith shop."

"Thanks," Atom said, "I think I'll take you up on that."

It was about a twenty minute walk from Titan's house to the laboratory complex where Cobalt had his flat. Before they started out, Cobalt looked up at the night sky. Besides the companion planet that their world shared an orbit with, there were only a handful of dim red stars visible. They soon found themselves in the dormitory building next to the laboratory complex where just the night before the two of them had worked on getting the observatory buildings dome working again. Cobalt had an extra bedroom next to his which he offered to his brother. Atom was so tired that he fell asleep in his clothes the moment he laid down in the bed.

"**I can't** believe that they are finally gone!" Titan said.

"That's not a nice thing to say about our only relatives!" Uran scolded her husband.

"I didn't mean it that way." Titan replied, "I've been aching to be alone with you for so long. You do realize that we've been married for over a week now and we haven't yet officially consummated our marriage?"

"Yes, I realize that." Uran sighed. "It's something that I've been both scared of, and also dying to do. Tell me, what is the last thing that you remember before we woke up in that meadow?"

"Holding you close to me in the cramped confines of the spaceship, adrift between the stars." Titan said.

"Exactly." Uran sighed. "I was deeply in love you then, and I still am. But we were robots then, and neither one of us had the equipment to experience physical love. Close contact was the best we could hope for. We tried mimicking the French kissing that we saw the humans do, but our robotic mouths didn't have the sensory inputs to really enjoy that."

"But Atom..." Titan started.

"Atom was different." Uran completed Titans statement. "One of the last things that Ochanomizu Hakase gave Atom before he died was the ability to father a child with a human being."

"But how ..."

"Many years earlier, a doctor Black Jack had preserved some of Tobio Tenma's sperm cells." Uran continued. "He harvested them while the boys body was lying in the hospital. The doctor later gave them to Ochanomizu Hakase for the purpose of giving Tobio, in the persona of Atom, the life that he'd lost. Remember that Atom's AI was based on Tobio's brain download. Not only did Atom have the ability to perform with a human female, he was able to derive pleasure from it."

"So Atom in his resurrected form,..."

"Is very well aware of his bodies sexual abilities." Uran laughed. "Just why do you think he was late for our party? I knew where he was and what he was doing. It took extreme effort on my part to shutter my mind from his or I'd have shared his experience. Believe me, ESP isn't all that it's cracked up to be. You're lucky that your abilities are only a fraction of mine!"

"Still, I feel rather embarrassed that we..."

"That we haven't given ourselves to each other yet?" Uran continued. "We were resurrected with all of our facilities fully working, but without having any time to discover them naturally. Real humans slowly mature and have time to become sexually active. They experiment with themselves before they interact with each other. We were never given that opportunity."

"Oh." Titan said. "You're right, you know. So what do we do?"

"I think, we get in bed, get naked, turn out the lights, be gentle with each other, and let nature take its course. We may make a mess of the sheets the first time, but I think it will fun." Uran said sweetly.

**An **hour later with the remaining housework completed, the newly weds found themselves naked in bed, in each other's arms. Their lips and tongues met, and they finally savored their first long French kiss. The experience relaxed them, and they felt all of their tensions melt away.

Titan held Uran close to him, and started to lightly run his fingers over her back. He used very gentle pressure as he massaged his wife's skin. She in turn, returned the favor, by massaging his back.

Both of them were purring like happy kittens as they teased each other, the sensations of their hands on each other's skin was tingling.

They finally got down to the serious love making, consummating their marriage.

"Holy shit!" Titan exclaimed. "That was fantastic! How was it for you?"

"Wonderful!" Uran replied with tears in her eyes. "Do you think we could try that again?"


	3. Chapter 3

_Fourteen._

**C**obalt could hear his brother's snoring in the kitchen area as he poured himself a glass of goats milk. He replaced the pitcher in the icebox and thought to himself how archaic it was that a society that possessed electric light still utilized 19th century Earth technology to preserve food. The icebox was a double insulated wooden cabinet kept chilled with blocks of river ice collected during the previous winter. The frozen water blocks were stored deep underground in the limestone caverns under the foothills where the castle of the priesthood stood. The underground chambers could hold enough ice to last all summer, but it was a messy job to haul the stuff out and deliver it at night all over the township. Cobalt made a mental note to himself that he needed to figure out how to make a good refrigerant gas, and design a suitable electric powered compressor to go along with it.

After finishing off the milk, he rinsed the glass off in the sink and left it there. He brushed his teeth and got ready for bed. Unlike Atom who either slept in the nude or in his clothes (depending on how tired he was moments before getting into bed), Cobalt had a favorite pair of pajamas that he wore, a silky robe like affair decorated with characters from an ancient Earth language that he'd almost forgotten how to read (it was actually Japanese).

It took him somewhat longer to fall asleep than it did his brother, and he was happily dreaming for several hours before being awakened by a loud crash. The sound of breaking glass was followed by a loud thump. Cobalt jumped out of bed and quickly wrapped a cotton bath robe around himself before running into the common area room between the two bedrooms. He snapped the light switch on as he entered the room to find two bodies slumped on the floor next to each other, both of them rubbing lumps on the top of their heads.

One of the two was Atom, who seemed quite surprised at where he had just woken up and he had no idea of how he had gotten there. The other person was dressed in black, and wore a sock like cap with eye holes cut out over his head. It was soon obvious to Cobalt that his brother had been sleepwalking when he had managed to bump into the burglar who had just made a rather clumsy entrance though the now broken window.

Cobalt pulled the sock hat off their unwanted guest's head and got a good look at his face. He had a large nose under which sprouted a thin mustache. He wore black framed glasses, the tops of which were hidden by a large producing brow. His head was somewhat misshapen, having a small flat spot in the back that didn't appear to have been the result of an accident, he must have been born that way.

"What the hell are you doing here, breaking into my home?" Cobalt demanded.

The burglar had a sorry look on his face, and he tried to be as apologetic as possible.

"I'm awful sorry," he said, "I didn't realize that these premises were occupied. The entire complex appears to have been abandoned centuries ago."

"That was true." Cobalt admitted, "However I have been slowly making repairs and putting the place back to its original use. There are empty quarters in another wing of this building, if you are in need of shelter."

"You'd allow me to do that after I crashed your home?" The man said.

"Maybe." Cobalt replied. "You still haven't told me your name or your story."

"Sorry." the burglar said. "My name is Acetylene Lamp. Until a few days ago I was working in the livery stable shoveling horse manure. I got a bit tired of that and decided to find work elsewhere. While I don't remember much of my former life, I think I might have been some sort of criminal for I do remember being in jail with another person who I woke up next to the day that I arrived in this world. I slowly remembered some things about the two of us that made me sick to my stomach and I decided I didn't want to remain near him, which is another reason I left the job at the stable. Rock really loves those horses."

"Rock?" Atom, now fully awake, asked.

"Rock Holmes." Lamp said. "I think we were cell mates in jail for quite some time. We escaped from prison and stole away on a doomed spaceship. Last thing I remember is us dying in space."

"That's probably why you ended up here." Cobalt said. "I'm beginning to have a theory about our resurrection, and your story may help confirm it."

Lamp got up and then gave Atom a hand getting off the floor. The two of them stood looking eye to eye.

"I remember seeing you in the Tavern awhile ago," Atom said. "At the time I thought I remembered you but I couldn't place it. I still don't know for sure, but somehow I think I was involved in law enforcement and was responsible for your arrest on at least one occasion."

"What's your name?" Lamp asked.

"I'm Atom, and this is my brother Cobalt." Atom said.

"Atom, hmm." Lamp replied rubbing his head. "You didn't use to go by another name did you? Astro or something like that?"

"Yes, you're right about that." Atom said. "I used to be a robot in my former life, in fact Cobalt and my sister Uran as well as my other brother Titan were also robots. Titan is now a cousin, but that's another story."

"I think things are coming back to me, but it's very hazy." Lamp said. "Well, I'm glad to met you again Astro Boy. This time, let's make our relationship based on friendship instead of the other stuff."

"Sounds good to me." Atom said offering Lamp his hand. The two shook hands and patted each other on the back.

"I can use some help around here." Cobalt broke in. "I have the authorization from the Bügermeister to hire help, and to issue you wages on the village bank."

"I accept." Lamp said. "Anything you want me to do would be better than having to smell manure all day long with that creepy Rock lusting after me."

* * *

_Fifteen._

**O**nce again the strange pink and green mist appeared in the upper valley. This time there was no warning for the Bügermeister as Rebeca slept in late for the first time in her life. The effect of using her bodies charms to trap Atom under her control had weakened her constitution just slightly, and she slept through the dream which would have warned her of the apparition in the upper valley.

The two young men that awakened in the valley were placed some distance from each other, far enough apart that neither was aware of the others presence. Both appeared to be in their early twenties, and were of adult stature. The taller of the two had a deep reddish brown complexion which made him look something between Indian or African in race, though in fact he was neither. He had strikingly blond hair that was almost golden in color and deep brown eyes.

The other was shorter, more boyish in appearance than the first. His dark hair erupted into two pointed cowlicks projecting back behind each ear, and his hauntingly blue eyes stood out from his impish face.

Both of them seemed astonished to be where they now found themselves, and were equally confused after a quick self examination that confirmed that they were not what they had once been. In the taller ones case, he was horrified to discover he had been transformed into the very thing that he had hated during his former life.

Somehow both of them made their way into the Village Town, just as all of the newcomers had done before them. They bumped into each other in the town plaza and discovered that they knew who each other had been.

"I can't believe this," Atlas cried pointing at Mars. "Here I am in the afterlife and the first dude I run into is the pipsqueak that thought he was better than my nemesis!"

"You mean that stupid copy cat?" Mars yelled back. "Don't you dare compare me to him, I was always better than he was. Besides look who's talking! The misguided jerk who could never do anything right!"

The two of them approached each other and exchanged blows to the shoulder. They felt the pain in their fists and upper arms, reinforcing the realization that neither one of them were robots anymore.

"Will you look at us!" Mars laughed. "We are now a pair of helpless humans. I don't know about you, but I'm starving."

Atlas tilted his head back to catch the smell of fresh coffee brewing drifted above him. He followed his nose towards the Tavern, with Mars close behind him. The two of them entered just as Cobalt was taking his usual seat in full sight of the door. Somehow he recognized the two former robots and waved to them. Mars face gave away the fact that Cobalt looked familiar to him and he was the first to take a seat next to Atom's brother. Atlas sat between them with a puzzled look on his face.

"I take it you just arrived on this world." Cobalt said.

"That's true." Atlas replied. "Just which world is this and who am I talking to?"

"I don't know the answer to the first question yet," Cobalt answered, "And as for the second, my name is Cobalt, and I was Atom's robotic brother at one time."

"You mean Astro, don't you?" Atlas asked, "and how do you remember me?"

Cobalt blushed a little as he answered. "A long time ago I once had a serious crush on you." he said.

Mars broke out laughing, while Atlas crossed his arms and backed away slightly.

"You were a fagot robot?" he said. "Well keep the fuck away from me!"

"I'd tell you to cool your jets, but you don't have them anymore." Cobalt replied. "That was then, and this is now. My human persona seems to have a quite normal, though rather introverted set of hormones."

"What?" Atlas asked.

"He means he's a geeky heterosexual, you numskull!" Mars said giving Atlas a good slap on the top of his head.

"I guess you haven't seen the Bügermeister yet?" Cobalt asked.

"The ham burglar who?" Atlas asked.

"He means the mayor, you nitwit." Mars answered. "No you're the first person we've talked to since walking into this one horse town."

"Actually there are quite a few horses here." Cobalt sighed. "Well, he would have found you lodging and employment, but I can do that as well. Seems I have an extra two rooms left in my apartment flat, and I think I might have gainful work for each of you."

"Thank you." Atlas said.

"Wait until I introduce you to your new employer before you thank me." Cobalt said to Atlas.

After paying for breakfast Cobalt led the two newcomers to where his electric car was parked.

"Get in." Cobalt told them. "This is the only automobile on this planet, I built it myself."

The vehicle was mostly constructed from surplus wagon parts. Powered by old fashioned lead acid type batteries it didn't go very fast, or have a great deal of range, but it was good enough for the distances that Cobalt needed to travel when he'd rather not walk. He drove a short distance from the village and stopped in front the blacksmith shop. Atom was busy repairing an iron gate that the Bügermeister had brought by the previous evening. Cobalt led Atlas into the shop and pounded on one of the display cases to get his brother's attention over the roar of the fireplace.

Atom turned and smiled at his brother.

"I thought you could use an apprentice." Cobalt said. "You're always trying to do seven jobs at once around here."

"Yeah, I guess I could." Atom said. As he walked closer he suddenly realized who it was that was standing next to his brother.

"Well as I live and breathe!" Astro laughed, "look who came through the resurrection black hole!"

"Yeah, its great to see you again too." Atlas frowned.

"You still holding a grudge against me?" Atom asked.

"Not really." Atlas said. "Wouldn't be logical anymore, seeing I'm no longer better than the flesh bags I used to hate." Suddenly the fake frown on Atlas's face disappeared and was replaced by a wide grin as he took a flying leap at Atom and tackled him to the ground in a powerful bear hug! The two of them rolled on the ground punching each other playfully in the arm and applying nuggies to each others scalp.

Cobalt was confused, but when the two of them finally got up and embraced each other and then pulled him into the mess to make it a three way, he realized that he'd been had and that this was going to work out after all.

Cobalt grabbed Atlas and motioned him to come along with him.  
"I'll bring your new best buddy back in about an hour or so." Cobalt told Atom. "I'm going to run him and Mars over to the general store and get them some threads to wear, and from there set them up in the spare rooms at my dorm building."

"Mars is here too?" Atom asked.

"Yeah, he's sitting in the car. I'm going to put him to work at the power plant." Cobalt replied. "He'll fit right in there, but Atlas would have caused a meltdown working there. He's so non-technical headed."

"I resemble that remark!" Atlas scowled.

"Yeah, you sure do!" Cobalt replied.

**C**obalt ran Atlas and Mars back into town where they were fitted for a set of clothes at the general store, and then he ran both of them to the dormitory building and assigned each of them a room in a suite of four. They would be sharing a common area with Acetylene Lamp who was now doing various manual labor at the power station and the laboratory complex. Atlas and Mars quickly got set up in their new quarters. It was shortly before noon when he dropped Atlas back at Atom's blacksmith shop, and the blond haired former robot was quickly put to work.

"You know at one time I thought you were sorta my brother," Atom told Atlas, "because we were both built from the same set of plans, created by the same scientist."

"I vaguely remember Dr. Tenma, now that you mention it." Atlas said.

Atom dragged his new assistant over to the foundry where they would be working that day. Atom had Atlas put on the kind of same heavy leather coveralls that he was already wearing, which protected them from the heat of the molten metal. For most of the rest of the day they lifted the heavy crucibles filled with molten iron and dragged them over to the waiting sand molds that Atom had prepared earlier. When quitting time for the day finally arrived Atlas was feeling the burn in his muscles from the heavy labor.

"Boy, do I ache all over!" he complained.

"So maybe now you can appreciate what it's like being human." Atom laughed.

"I guess this is some kind of cosmic karma payback," Atlas said, "I'm being punished in the after life for my sins as a robot in my former one."

"I actually think this is a kind of reward." Atom said. "Only a good soul gets to live again."

**M**ars thought that he had died and gone to heaven when he arrived in the laboratory complex. Cobalt gave him the grand tour though out the large abandoned facilities several buildings. "Do I get to invent stuff?" He asked Cobalt.

"You'll be assisting me in getting this place fully operational again first." Cobalt told him. "Once that is done any independent research that you want to take on will have to get my approval, but somehow I don't think that will be a problem."

"Great!" Mars cried out.

They spend the day in one of the machine shops, mostly taking inventory of what was repairable, and what would have to be scrapped. Cobalt made a list of items that would have to be recast, and he sketched up numerous drawings from which he'd later try to make full sized models for Atom to transform into sand molds in the foundry.

Acetylene Lamp spent most of his first day pushing a broom in the various parts of the laboratory complex. He didn't mind the labor much, although the place was dusty and smelled of rust. Still, it was a much more pleasant task to him than stepping around piles of smelly manure in the stables and having to keep out of Rock's way.

* * *

_Sixteen._

**R**ebeca sat naked upon the cold stone in the darkness. Blindfolded, she could hear the sounds of the chamber door opening, and could feel the draft of the cool air entering. The soft footsteps of the bare footed priests entering the chamber, and their soft chanting were the next sounds that she heard, followed by the heavy stone door being closed behind them. Rebeca nervously waited for the Elder Mother to start the ritual. She had mentally prepared for the ordeal of of her ascension to the priesthood, but all the meditation she had done during the day, along with the fasting for the previous two were just the beginning.

The room grew quiet as the priests stopped their chanting. Rebeca heard the striking of a match and smelled the burning sulfur as it burst into flames. The smell of the Teska tobacco burning in the pipe reached her nose. Elder Mother's voice started to sing the sacred prayers and then the pipe was pushed between Rebeca's lips. "Take a deep inhale of the pipe and hold the holy smoke in your lungs as long as you can," commanded her spiritual leader. Rebeca coughed once, the thick smoke burned her lungs but she held her breath.

Next a large goblet of the holy elixir of life wine was placed against her lips. "Drink deeply as much as you can hold," Elder Mother commanded.

Rebeca now tasted the Teska wine for the first time. Still holding the smoke in her lungs she drank the syrupy liquid, taking large gulps at a time. The elixir had a sickeningly bitter taste, and caused an itching sensation in her throat going down. Her head began to spin from the effects of the Teska drugs.

The Elder mother then took a bowl filled with the sap from the heartwood of the Teska tree, and used it as an ink to paint various symbols on Rebeca's skin using a horse hair brush.

Rebeca's head felt lighter and she could feel herself leaving her body to float up above the circle of the priests that surrounded her. She could see herself sitting naked in the middle of the dimly lit room as Elder Mother took a pair of scissors to cut a small handful of her hair which she sprinkled upon a fire burning in a cauldron just outside the circle.

She rose higher into the air, passing through the ceiling of the room and out the roof of the castle. Higher she rose, until she reached the heavens and could see the world below her orbiting around the red dwarf sun along side of its larger companion body. She shot away from the small solar system and got further and further away into the inky blackness of space. All of the distant red dots of the few stars in the visible heavens receded from view until there was absolutely nothing left but herself. She could feel the beating of her heart and the pain in her lungs demanding breath. Suddenly there was a blinding light filling all of space.

Rebeca exhaled the smoke that filled her lungs and gasped for breath. She felt the blindfold gone from her eyes and and she opened them. Her first sight was that of Elder Mothers face and she now felt the cool dampness of the wet cloth being applied to her body.

"You have just entered a new world, and you have survived it." Elder Mother told her. Rebeca sat down on the pile of straw that lay on the ground in front of her. One by one the priests walked over to her and fed her slices of bread covered with rich a creamy butter. She drank from a cup filled with cold water. The bread eased the pain in her stomach, but her head still spun from the effects of the Elixir.

"Lie down and rest, child." Elder Mother commanded her. "You will sleep for some time before you awaken again, and you may have some disturbing dreams. Once you do awaken, you will know God and you will have become his willing servant."

Rebeca lay down naked on the straw and was covered by a warm blanket. She fell into a deep sleep as the heavy stone door was opened and the priests left. Only Elder Mother remained, sitting by her side for many hours while Rebeca slept.

For several hours she dreamed. In her visions she saw the universe expand as every star system flew away from all of its neighbors. As the distances between the stars increased, their numbers diminished. Soon she could easily count the number of stars visible to her. As she watched the stars expanded into thin clouds of gas. The universe began to unravel until there was nothing left but a thin cloud of dismembered matter that was everywhere the same. All was quiet, dark, and cold and God's presence itself evaporated along with everything else. Even Hell itself had froze over.

Her vision shifted and she saw herself dressed in the dark robes of the Elder Mother. She could taste the strong sweet tart spicy burning meat of the Teska fruit going down her throat. She now knew that it was her destiny to succeed the Elder Mother, and she knew that it would happen soon. She would give birth to the soul that would become the seed of the next Universe.

**R**ebeca opened her eyes as she felt the noonday sun gently against her skin. She opened her eyes to find herself lying naked in the middle of the courtyard behind the castle inside the stone walls of the fence that surround it. How long she had slept, and how long she had been lying on the horsehair stuffed mattress on her cot in the sun, she had no idea. She looked around and saw that she was surrounded by a circle of monks who smiled when they saw that she was now awake.

Rebeca tried to get up from where she lay, but her legs wouldn't respond to her will. Two of the monks took her by her arms and and helped her to her feet. Still feeling too feeble to walk, the monks held up up and guided her towards the castle. They accompanied her to her rooms and set her down in a soft chair while one of them drew the water for her bath. The devoted monk servants then helped her into the steaming water and bathed her. She relaxed in the warm water while her back was scrubbed, and her hair was washed. She felt the soapy wash cloth gently scrubbing the sticky tar like sap from her skin. The monks had soothing hands, they massaged and caressed her. The water began to cool off, but two monks entered the bath and poured freshly heated water into the tub to keep the temperature comfortable. By now Rebeca's head had cleared and the strength had returned to her limbs. She carefully stepped from the tub as a monk wrapped a large absorbent towel around her body.

"Thank you." She told them.

As the monks left her chamber, she noticed that they had laid out her clothes on the bed. Rebeca dressed slowly, and then returned to the bathroom. The steam which had fogged the mirror had evaporated and she could now see herself clearly in the looking glass. She starred into her eyes, which were now the same vivid shade of iridescent emerald green that all the members of the priesthood sported. She knew that this was the effect of the drugs made from the Teska tree, the very same elixirs that gave the priesthood the power to see beyond sight and join minds with God.

* * *

_Seventeen._

**R**ock brushed each of the horses in the stable carefully, paying close attention to their moods. A large brown mare nuzzled him affectionately. Rock reached into his rear pocket and extracted a large carrot which he held before the animal, who accepted it with a nod of thanks with his huge head.

Rock didn't miss Lamp at all, in fact he was glad that the large klutz had stormed out of their rooms and and quit working at the stables. While he did have some fond memories of their steamy encounters in a previous existence, he no longer found the man very attractive. Rock looked in a mirror hanging on the wall of the stable and admired himself. His new body was quite muscular, his skin clear and taut. The brown mare walked towards him and bumped her forehead against Rocks ass, to get his attention.

Rock patted the brown horse on its head and gave her another carrot. After he finished cleaning up in the stables he decided to take a break. Rock walked outside and headed toward the narrow road that lead off into the distance. He had walked about a quarter of a mile when he noticed a number of short men with shaved heads wearing robes made from rough burlap like cloth. On their feet were simple sandals, and cloth gloves on their hands. The men were at work in the field along side the road, picking the fruit and leaves from a grove of modestly tall trees. Rock approached the men smiling. As soon as the monks saw him, they ran towards him and pushed him away back toward the road.

"It is forbidden to touch the Tezka trees!" they told him. "Begone under the pain of death from the priests!"

While the monks were not armed, they were too numerous to reckon with so Rock prudently backed away from them. When he was far enough away from them, the Monks returned to their task, harvesting the spoils of the trees. His curiosity had been engaged however, and Rock made a mental note to return and examine the grove when the monks were not present.

* * *

_Eighteen._

**C**obalt carefully polished the two glass disks using a rag soaked in a solution of diluted pine tree sap. He was only trying to remove nearly a centuries worth of mold and grim from the surfaces of the 60 Cm glass disks. Mounted a few millimeters apart from each other in the large brass cell that lay on the floor next to the work bench, the ancient slabs of glass had once been the objective of a modestly powerful telescope. With Cobalts hard work, and a bit of luck, they would be again.

Mars was working on cleaning the brass mounting for the nearly two foot diameter achromatic lens. He carefully used a small rubber headed hammer to remove minor dents in the surface of the mounting. The two of them worked at their tasks for almost the entire day. In the other corner of the room sat an optically flat mirror that Cobalt had labored on for some time. He and Atom had made use of the furnace in the foundry to melt enough glass to cast a large disk equal in size to the telescopes objective lens. The large disk lay under a pile of hay and horse manure for nearly a week, slowly cooling to avoid cracking or developing internal strains. They had also cast several large sheets of glass on a water vat which Cobalt had polished and tested against each other to generate a nearly perfectly flat optical surface, one which he knew by exactly how many wavelengths of light it deviated from a perfectly flat surface by. He used the known sheet of glass to compare the surface of the large disk and then polished it optically flat. The test mirror was then chemically coated with a thin layer of silver and again polished and tested. Tonight, with the help of his brother and Atlas, they would test and reassemble the lens.

**T**he four of them gathered in the Village Town tavern for dinner. Atom and Atlas had cleaned themselves of the dirt and grime from their labors in the foundry, but their clothes still had traces of the furnace soot, and the foundry sand and clay.

"We managed to complete the casting of the replacement parts for the telescope mount." Atom told his brother. "They're sitting in the back of the wagon parked in my stable."

"Excellent!" Cobalt replied. "After dinner we'll stop by your place to pick up the load and transport it to the observatory. I hope you two will be available to help me finish my work on the objective."

"No problem." Atom answered quickly.

"Thanks for volunteering me." Atlas scowled, punching Atom in the arm.

"I really appreciate your help, Atlas." Cobalt said. "If you like you can have the first look though the eyepiece after the instrument is re-collimated."

Atlas just shrugged his shoulders. "Sure, thanks." he said.

**A** few hours later Atlas and Atom provided the manual labor to carefully lift the glass disks up from the polishing station and carry them over to the test stand in front of the optically flat mirror. Cobalt darkened the room and used a small hand held telescope mounted on a stand fixture to sight the return beam of light though a pinhole and a slit. He took measurements of the distance from the glass disks as he moved the light source side to side, testing several zones of the glass. As he called out the numbers, Mars jotted them down in a spiral bound notebook. After taking each set of readings, Cobalt sat down with the laboratory note book and mentally performed a set of calculations. They had been performing these tests for several nights now, and each time after taking a set of measurements Cobalt would figure out how far off from a perfect optical figure the lens was. After they had tested both sides of each disk of the lens, Cobalt had a grin on his face.

"I think it's ready." He said, bending down to inspect the brass mounting cell that Mars had labored on repairing.

"Perfect!" he said, patting his assistant on the back. "Let's put the old girl back together now."

Atlas and Atom lifted the heavy brass cylinder onto the work bench. Cobalt then motioned them towards the half of the lens that would sit on the outside of the cell, and would face the heavens. It took them nearly a half an hour to carefully lower the 60cm diameter disk into the cell. Cobalt carefully wiped the inner surface of the lens clean with a thin lint free cloth and then placed the thin shim ring on top of the first disk. This metal ring would space the two halves of the objective lens the correct distance apart so that their focal lengths and index of refractions and dispersions would cancel out the color fringes normally associated with an image formed by a lens. Now they carefully lowered the second disk of glass on top of the first. Last came the inner mounting ring that would hold the two disks tightly against each other. With all the pieces now in place, the lens was ready for starlight.

"I know it's late, but let's unload the wagon and bring the new parts for the equatorial mount inside and install them." Cobalt begged.

"Sure." Atom quickly agreed, while Atlas groaned.

"You can sleep late tomorrow if you want." Atom told his apprentice.

"Gee thanks, it's my day off anyway." Atlas smirked.

Several hours later Cobalt started the clock drive and watched as the telescope cradle rotated though its full range of motion along both degrees of freedom. He really wanted to mount the cell on the optical tube and then hoist that back into place on the German Equatorial mount, but they were all very tired and they very well might make a mistake that could damage all of their hard work. Maybe tomorrow.

* * *

_Nineteen._

**T**he priests gathered in the conclave room in front of the altar. Up on the raised platform Elder Mother unrolled the ancient scroll. The holy document was one of several that the order had in their possession for as long as anyone could remember. It was said that these relics had survived the destruction of mankind's earliest worlds and had been passed down from generation to generation since the creation of the universe. The parchment that the text was inscribed on resembled leather, the writing was done in a thick dark black ink that seemed to absorb all light. A thin but indestructible flexible coating of a material whose composition was unknown protected the ancient scrolls, probably the reason they hadn't deteriorated into dust due to their age. The writing on the scrolls was in a long forgotten language in characters that the order believed had been inscribed by the hand of God, himself. Wound on petrified wooden spools, the holy words could only be gazed at, their meaning was a complete mystery. Each week a different section of the text was scanned by the priesthood, the image of the rune like script burned into the memory of the clergy.

**R**ebeca was called to the altar for her first time. She partook of the ceremonial smoke, and the elixir of life, this time consuming only a small amount of each. She was now a fully anointed member of the priesthood, her eyes glowing the irredentist green of those that had been modified by the Teska trees magic. She was handed the silver pointing wand to touch the holy words in the scroll. The tip of the wand was molded into the shape of a hand with an outstretched index finger. Since it was forbidden to touch or even point at the words in the holy document with ones hand, the yad, as the pointing wand was called, had to be used to keep ones place as you memorized the image of each holy letter.

Following the 'reading', the scroll was carefully re-wrapped in its jacket of gold leaf covered leather, and placed back into the golden box behind the altar. The compartment that held the scrolls would close air tight and once sealed would fill with a mist void of any oxygen or moisture to protect the priceless relics from harm.

The priests then stood in a circle in the center of the conclave as a dome in the roof above them slid back to expose the night sky. The order gazed up at the sky with closed eyes and used their vision beyond sight to see into the future and look into the past. A collective vision formed in the minds of the women, though not all of them saw all of it. Their brains linked together though the power of their enhanced mental powers to act as a single device. For some reason, the focal point of their vision was directed towards Rebeca and she alone understood what had to be done. She alone now knew the truth and saw the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy.

**A**tom rose from his bed in the middle of the night. Without being aware of what he was doing, for his mind was still in the fog like state of slumber, he opened the door to his dwelling and stepped naked into the cool night air. A purpose that he wasn't aware of took control of him as he walked across the meadow towards the foothills where the castle of the matriarchal priests stood. The large gate at the entrance to the courtyard swung open for him as he entered, and it slowly closed behind him. Rebeca was waiting for him, wearing only a thin nearly transparent gown that didn't hide the outline of her breasts or the dark shapes of her hard nipples. As Atom approached her, she unbuttoned the front of her gown and let it slide off her shoulders. She took Atom by the hand and led him toward a patch of tall, soft clover wet with the dew of the the cool evening. She lay down in the soft vegetation, and willed him as a slave toward her.

Atom took the desired position on top of her and began to perform the function that Rebeca had brought him there for. With his brain still asleep locked in a trance like state by the telepathic powers of Rebeca's drug enhanced mind, he didn't feel anything as Rebeca forced him to perform on her. Once again she imprinted herself on him through the sexual act. Rebeca was now sure that Atom was ready.

With the task completed, she gently escorted Atom to the courtyard gate and commanded the guards on duty to open the door. Atom blindly walked back the way he had come, and returned to his room. He unconsciously got back into his bed to continue sleeping.

**U**ran tossed and turned in her bed all night. Titan was aware of his wife's disturbed slumber as she rolled into him several times during the night. She loudly moaned during the night, at times making sounds that Titan had only heard her emit during some of their more passionate love making. He considered trying to shake her awake from what was obviously a bad dream, but was afraid that doing that might be even more disturbing to her than the nightmare she was now experiencing. Suddenly she sat up in the bed and shook her husband who had finally managed to drift off despite the trauma that Uran had been exposing him to.

Titan looked at her as he rubbed his eyes. "Are you alright?" he asked with concern.

"It's Atom." She replied. "I was connected to his mind in the middle of the night."

"Invading the privacy of his dreams?" Titan asked.

"No, it was thrust upon me by a power I can't comprehend." Uran answered. "Ever since we arrived here I've had this latent telepathic ability. Mostly it was between myself and Atom or Cobalt, and Atom's mind is the more dynamic. Cobalt's thoughts put me to sleep. I don't have too much control over this contact, though I can usually shut it out, or pry my way in when I want to. This is the second time that I've been forced to feel what Atom was going though, and both times it was very personal."

"You mean.." Titan started.

"Sex." Uran said. "With that witch again. She forced him upon herself. I'm sure it was her mind that pried its way into mine, though I don't think she's aware that I felt it. Atom and I have a telepathic connection that's always there, I can feel what he does most of the time when his experience is heightened. By forcing her mind onto his, part of that energy gets into mine. I don't think I can stand that again!"

**T**he late mourning sun tickled Atom's face waking him. He was confused as to why he had overslept, and as he got out of bed, he noticed the clover leaves sticking to his body and the bed sheets. "That's funny," he thought, "have I been sleep walking again?"

* * *

_Twenty._

**B**ügermeister Köenig parked his two wheeler on the road leading towards the damn, and made his way on foot to the middle of the structure. He rang the bell at the entrance to the power plant and waited. Within a few minutes Old Man Tesla's footsteps could be heard on the other side of the door, followed by the unlatching and opening of the entrance.  
"What can I do for you Herr Köenig?" the head engineer asked.

"I'm just checking up on how your new assistant is doing." The Bügermeister replied. "Just where is Master Cobalt?" he asked.

"Oh, he's been and gone already." Tesla answered. "Ever since we got all of the maintenance issues around here under control Cobalt has been coming in early to do his daily inspection. If he finds everything normal, which is usually the case, he'll leave until just after the lunch hour to check up on everything and leave if there are no issues. On the few rare occasions where he discovered a pending failure, Cobalt directed us as to how to fix things before we had a problem. Sometimes he has his assistant Mars watching over the place. That young man is almost as smart as Cobalt is."

"It sounds like your assistant had become your supervisor," Köenig laughed.

"Actually, I suppose he has" Tesla replied, "and I couldn't be happier about that."

"Well, I have noticed that the electric power in town has been much more reliable since I brought Cobalt over to you." Köenig added.

"Not only that, but take a look at this." Tesla smiled, opening the top drawer of his desk and extracting what appeared to be a small light bulb.

"That looks like a light bulb, but it's too small." Köenig told him.

"Really?" Tesla asked. He turned his desk lamp on. The carbon filament bulb gave off a soft orange glow that was easy on the eyes, but somehow didn't illuminate the papers sitting on the desk that well.  
"As you can see the bulbs we are now using seem to work, but if you look carefully, you'll see that they don't provide the color rendition you'd expect, objects look much more colorful outdoors under sunlight than they do under electric illumination. Artists and tailors prefer to work in the daytime under a skylight where they can make out colors correctly."

Tesla switched off the lamp and reached into the reflector to unscrew the bulb. He then replaced it with the diminutive one he had just shown Köenig. "This new style bulb is smaller because its filament doesn't have to be quite as large. It's made of a new metal that Cobalt has figured out how to extract from the vein of Wolframite ore that he recently discovered. Now watch as I switch it on."

The lamp literally exploded into a brilliance that nearly blinded the Bügermeister. Every little crease in the wooden top of the desk suddenly became visible, the colors of the wood stood out like an artists canvas under the almost pure white glare from the tiny bulb.

"This little lamp produces about twice the light output that the larger bulb did, and yet it draws exactly the same current." Tesla said. "If we got rid of every one of the old bulbs in use and replaced them with these new ones we'd only have to install half as many, and we could double the number of homes that the plant could service."

"Incredible!" Köenig gasped. "Cobalt is a genius! Where is he now?"

"You can find him over at the old abandoned laboratory complex." Tesla replied.

"Did you tell him that place was taboo?" Köenig asked.

"I might have mentioned it." Tesla said. "But he doesn't believe in ghosts, and neither do I."

"I think I will have a talk with him," The Bügermeister answered.

**K**öenig drove the two wheeler out toward the old abandoned campus where the ancients had once devoted their minds towards the study of science and technology. He crossed himself and whispered a brief prayer to guard off the evil spirits that he had been led to believe still inhabited the place. Seeing Cobalt's electric powered carriage parked by the domed brick building he walked over towards that direction. He tested the door and found it ajar, so he pulled it open and entered.

Cobalt was standing on a tall ladder looking through the eyepiece of the old telescope. The slits covering the opening in the dome were pulled open and the lens of the great instrument was pointed upwards.

"Didn't anyone warn you about this place?" Köenig yelled up.

Cobalt leaned back from the eyepiece and looked down at the Bügermeister. "Don't tell me you are superstitious." He said, "I always thought you were better educated than that."

"Education has nothing to do with my fears of this place, history does." Köenig told him.

Cobalt descended the ladder and walked over to Köenig.

"What do you expect to accomplish here?" Köenig asked.

"This old telescope should see its first light again this evening if I can complete the collimation in time." Cobalt told him. "Then I will be able to perform a scan of the night sky and finally determine just how far into the future we are from the point in time where I previously existed. I might be able to tell where in the universe this planet is."

"I see," the Bügermeister replied. "You have some old ghosts you want to scare off."

"Perhaps." Cobalt said. "I'd also like to know why I'm here."

"If you mean you'd like to know why you were resurrected, I think that you'd have to ask one of the priests, if you dare."

"Speaking of the holy women, why to they consider this place to be taboo?" Cobalt laughed.

"I guess you'd like a history lesson," Köenig answered. "Very well, you need to know."

Cobalt pulled up a tall stool and sat down. "I'm all ears." he said.

"Very well." Köenig started. "It's now been many centuries, perhaps even nearly a millennium that this place has been abandoned. My great grandfather recalled to me when I was a boy that his great grandfather remembered this complex being abandoned, so you get an idea of the time frame. The witches recall the story of a time when the sky burned in the distance and the river reeked of death. Human and animal bodies would float down from upstream,and there were no living fish swimming in the river. Babies were born deformed and quickly died, livestock failed to have calves, and starvation was rampart. It was decided to send a small army of men up the river to investigate. They found a vast city state that had been destroyed by forces beyond our comprehension. The land had been scorched, huge craters had been melted into the ground, and anyone that stayed in that region for any length of time came back sick from some kind of poisoning that seemed to eat their insides apart, their flesh peeling from their bones. Examples of the horrible weapons of war that these people had released upon themselves were discovered, a technology so repulsive to us that the priesthood banned all study of such knowledge. That's when this place fell into disuse."

Mars appeared in the back from where he had been working. "Sounds like a nuclear war." he said.

"Very likely." Cobalt added. "I might try and assemble a Geiger counter to take some readings to see if there is still any radiation in the air."

"I'm not sure I understand what you are talking about," Köenig said, "but it sounds like you have a better idea of the cause of the disaster than I do. In any case, after many generations the water did clear, the diseases faded away and life did return. An edict was issued that made the creation of any technology dangerous to mankind a deadly sin. Specifically any explosive, any weapon of any kind, any machine that could mimic the mind and think for itself was now prohibited."

"Computers were banned?" Mars interjected.

"Even the use of that word itself is a deadly sin punishable by death." the Bügermeister told him. Don't let anyone else hear you utter it again!"

Cobalt walked over to the workbench and pointed to an abacus and a mechanical calculator. "Even these instruments are considered evil?" he asked.

"The abacus is an ancient thing and is not considered evil, for most of the work is still done in the head of the operator." Köenig answered. "I wouldn't let anyone know you've restored the other." he added, "For it could be considered a thinking machine."

"This collection of gears and wheels?" Cobalt asked. "It is nothing more than an abacus with a better user interface, and has about as much ability to think as a pencil would."

"Perhaps, but the decisions of the priesthood would prevail in such a matter, and I would not tempt fate." Köenig told him. "I will not say anything of what you are doing here to anyone, but you need to be careful. The witches have eyes and ears everywhere."

* * *

_Twenty one._

**U**ran woke up in the middle of the night and ran into the bathroom. She barely got there in time, she raised the lid of the toilet and leaned over to vomit into the bowl. Titan heard her retching and ran into the bathroom to aid his wife. He moistened a wash towel and used it to cool her face.

"This is the third time this week." he said with concern in his voice. "Perhaps you should see a healer."

"Oh you wonderful naive fool!" Uran smiled. "There isn't anything wrong with me, love. I'm carrying your children!"

"What?" Titan asked.

"I'm pregnant." She laughed. "With twins!"

"How can you know that?

"It's my ESP, silly. I can already detect their minds and I know that there are two of them, a boy and a girl."

"What are we going to call them?" Titan laughed.

"I've already got two names in mind," Uran said, "Tetsu, and Argon."

"I like those names," Titan said kissing his wife. "I think Tezuka would approve."

**A**tom heard the sound of the door to the blacksmith's shop open and he quickly ran from the back room towards the reception area. He recognized the woman standing there, for he had seen all of her before.

Rebeca loosened the veil that covered her face just enough to allow Atom to view the iridescent green of her eyes. She ordered him to approach her with her mind, and enforced it with her voice, whispering, "Please come here" several octaves below normal hearing.

Atom pushed the gate separating the workshop from the front area open and walked through. "What can I do for you madam?" he asked.

"You know who I am, don't you Atom." she said.

"You're one of the priests, aren't you?" Atom asked.

"You can say it," Rebeca replied, "I am a witch."

"That's such an ugly word." Atom replied back.

"I need you to come with me." Rebeca told him. "You are the chosen one that will fulfill the destiny of the ancient prophecy."

"I don't think I believe in that nonsense." Atom told her. "I've heard bits and pieces of it from the townspeople, but I'm just a commoner."

"You were resurrected on this world at this crucial moment in time for a reason." Rebeca said. "My inner sight revealed you too me, and I've imprinted myself on you, and you have responded. Now I must test you and bring out the power that you are destined to use. You are the one that was foretold would be the savior of the universe in the coming end time."

"I suppose I don't have a choice?" Atom said as he turned away.

"No you don't." Rebeca answered using the full power of her voice.

**A**tom felt a cold wave blowing over him. His vision went dark and he was surround by darkness. He turned to face Rebeca, she was now the only thing that he could see. The darkness swirled around him, and slowly grew brighter, turning to gray. Now the gray mist slowed down and he could see his surroundings. He was in a stone room lit by guttering candles.

"How did I get here?" Atom asked. "I don't remember leaving the blacksmith shop."

"I willed you to follow me here, Atom. You blindly obeyed without thinking so you don't remember walking here with me. You are in the castle of the priesthood, look around you."

Atom and Rebeca were surround by twelve women dressed in pure white silk robes. Their faces were covered by veils, each of them held a candle. One of them handed a long handled wooden pipe to Rebeca and she took a candle from another and held the flame to the bowl of the pipe. She placed the stem of the pipe into her mouth and drew in a breath causing the tobacco in the bowl of the pipe to glow and fill the room with smoke. Rebeca put the pipe stem into Atoms mouth.

"Draw a breath and hold it." She ordered.

Atom was helpless to disobey, and he took a deep draft from the pipe. The smoke burned his throat on the way to his lungs, and his vision blurred. Rebeca held a mirror to his eyes and he saw his face in the looking glass. The brown color in the irises of his eyes faded momentarily to an irredentist green. Atom coughed and exhaled. He took several quick breaths to clear his head before the pipe was pushed back between his lips and teeth. Rebeca pinched his nose and again ordered him to inhale the smoke of the Teska tobacco. With each draft Atom's head grew lighter and his vision more hazy. Finally it all blurred out completely.

Atom woke up and found himself tied down on a wooden cot with a horse hair and straw mattress. Rebeca was sitting on a stool next to him, staring at him with those cool iridescent green eyes.

"Good." she said. "You survived the first test rather well."

"What test?" Atom asked.

"The test of the pipe." She told him. "You briefly entered another world of existence, your mind floated free of your body for a while, do you remember?"

"No, I don't" Atom said. "I only remember passing out and then coming to here."

"You will remember." Rebeca told him. "For now you will sleep." She hummed to him in a lower register that he couldn't hear with his ears, but his mind could feel. He grew tired and fell back into a deep sleep. He began to dream, and he saw beyond his vision, but couldn't yet discern what it was that he was seeing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Book Two: The ****'****One****'**

_Twenty Two._

**T**he chill of the night air entered the observatory dome and caused Cobalt to shiver slightly. He drew the wool sweater he wore closed and buttoned it. His eyes slowly adapted to the darkness and he was able to see the controls of the instrument without using the dim red flashlight. He dialed in the desired sky coordinates and allowed the clockwork to move the large heavy optical tube of the telescope to point to the selected point in the heavens. The roof dome rotated in perfect synchronization with the motion of the telescope, the repairs to the mechanism by Atom and Atlas had been right on spot. Cobalt carefully refocused the eyepiece and engaged the clockwork to cause the telescope to stand station and track perfectly with the motion of the planet about its axis so the same point in the sky would remain under his eyepiece all night.

He thought he could make out patterns in the darkness that might correspond to traces of glowing matter drifting between the stars. With the instrument now perfectly aligned on target, Cobalt swapped out the eyepiece for a film holder and pulled the dark slide out from in front of the photographic plate. He now looked through the eyepiece of the companion finder scope that was mounted along side the main instrument. This was an eight inch refractor, not nearly as powerful as the two foot diameter lens of its parent, but powerful enough to allow Cobalt to keep the camera on its target by making small manual adjustments required to correct the small inaccuracies of the clockwork and the equatorial mounting.

He sat at the instrument all night as the great lens tracked from one horizon toward the other and the pitch blackness of the night sky gave way to a dull violet of the approaching dawn. He slipped the dark slide back into the film holder to end the exposure, and pulled it away from the instrument. Cobalt then climbed down the ladder to the ground and entered the dark room to process the single sheet of film. He carefully measured the temperature of the developing solutions and poured an equally carefully measured amount of each into the film tank in turn. After pouring the stop bath solution into the sink, he opened the film tank and removed the single sheet of film, and put it emulsion side up on the bottom of a tray filled with a solution of sodium thiosulfate. He left the negative in the fixer for the required length of time and then turned on the room lights to examine the fruits of his night long vigil.

The negative was clipped to a light box and he used a magnifier to look for patterns in the image. There were several dark spots which were the inverted image of the few visible stars in the field, and faint wispy lines that might have been what he was looking for, or just random patterns in the grain of the film. Cobalt compared the exposure that he'd just made with the several others from previous nights. The telescope had been in operation for nearly a week, but he still had barely enough data to draw any conclusions. He knew that he'd have to repeat his observations many more times before he had enough data to come to an answer and that tonights session had only been one of many more to come. Even so, a dark feeling had begun to enter his mind as if he already knew deep down what his research would eventually reveal.

**T**he door smashed open with a loud bang as Uran ran in with Titan in tow. "Atom is missing!" She yelled. "He's been abducted by the witches!"

Cobalt yawned and looked incredulously at his sister and her husband.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"We've been by his place." Titan responded. "The shop was wide open and his dwelling was empty. Nothing is missing, but there is no sign of him."

"I got a vision from him." Uran replied. "I couldn't register where he was, I'm not sure that he even knows. I connected with him mind for only an instant, and I got the weirdest feeling, as if I was out of my body floating in space."

"It was weird." Titan added. "Uran's eyes went briefly from their beautiful brown to a strange green color while she was in this trance, and they returned to normal when she snapped out of it."

"He must be with that witch that we saw in the town plaza on our first day in this world." Cobalt agreed. "The Bügermeister warned us of them and we know that Atom was seduced by her at least once."

"Twice that I was aware of." Uran replied. "I was with him both times against my will."

Titan looked at his wife and then remarked, "I don't think you should be in connection with Atom, you might endanger the children."

"You may be right." Uran sighed, "But I can't control my ESP connection with my brother, and if he is in trouble I must find him."

"Children?" Cobalt asked. His mind was tired from the long nights work, but he gradually realized what was going on.

"How long have you known?" He asked.

"A few weeks now." Uran said. "I'm carrying two of them, a boy and a girl."

"That's wonderful!" Cobalt told her, and he pulled both Titan and Uran close for a hug. "Now we need to find Atom." He said. "Uran, please go home, Titan and I will go to the witch's castle and see if we can find him."

"Be careful," Uran replied. "You don't know what they are capable of."

"Don't worry." Cobalt said, "I'm going to bring Mars and Atlas along to help. Besides, the witches don't know what I am capable of either."

* * *

_Twenty three._

**A**tlas and Mars listened carefully as Cobalt and Titan briefed them on what had happened. Mars kept his eyes on the the apparatus lying on the table. His curiosity reached the breaking point and he asked, "What is this stuff?"

Lying on the table were several glass tubes filled with bits of bent metal. Each had several wires sticking out of one sealed end, and a pinched off tip at the other. They resembled tiny light bulbs, but they emitted very little light and were filled with an ionization glow. They were wired together on a thin perforated fiber board with other bits and pieces.

"Ah, so you noticed my attempt at electronics." Cobalt said. "Those small vacuum tubes are wired as a subsonic oscillator. The witches, or so the priesthood are called, are known to be able to control an individual's mind by use of their ESP and their voice. I'm not sure about the ESP part, though Uran might be able to give me an answer to that. As for the voice, from what I've been able to figure out, they use a very low pitched modulation in their voice to generate a subliminal suggestion that our brains can be influenced by. This circuit will act as a phase locked loop and generate a countering frequency 180 degrees out of phase that will cancel out the effect of their vocal powers. The circuit can also generate an inverse sound which we can't hear at a high volume that can hopefully cause some discomfort to the witches, sort of like turning their powers against them."

"How the hell ..." Mars asked.

"I've already converted the light bulb factory to manufacture high efficiency lamps with tungsten filaments." Cobalt laughed. "It wasn't too far a leap to recreate these thermionic valves."

The completed devices fit into a leather pouch that could be worn like a purse by a strap hanging over ones shoulder. Weighting several pounds, it contained a dry battery pack, the electronics bundle, two transducers and was connected to a pair of transducers to be worn in ones ears. A small gun like device contained a sonic emitter.

"You carry this gizmo and put the transducer buds into your ears." Cobalt explained. "Any low frequency modulated voice is counter acted by the circuit and you won't be effected by the witches subliminal suggestions."

"What about their ESP?" Atlas asked. "I thought that Atom was influenced from a distance in his sleep."

"I'm not quite sure about that." Cobalt said. "But he and Uran have strong ties, it's possible that Atom has a deeply suppressed ESP potential that makes him as susceptible to receiving ESP suggestions, as Uran is to hearing them."

"What about you?" Mars asked.

"Alas, my brain isn't reachable that way." He smiled. "As an experiment I asked Uran to try her best to send me suggestions and to listen in on my thoughts. I'm about as transparent to her as a brick wall. Hopefully the witches will have as much luck with me as Uran did."

**A**tom regained conciseness to find himself in much nicer surroundings. He was lying naked in a large poster bed covered with silken sheets and a deep fluffy comforter. Rebeca smiled at him as he opened his eyes, and tossed him a large white cotton robe.

"Here, put this on." she told him softly. "You must be hungry, come with me and we'll take care of that."

Atom sat up in the bed and slipped his arms into the robe and wrapped it around himself, tying it closed with the attached belt. The warm garment hung down below his knees. There was a pair of slippers on the floor waiting for him, and he stepped into them and followed Rebeca out of the bed chamber and down the hallway. She led him to a small dinning area where several round tables surround by high backed chairs were set up. Atom was directed to a table where a modest meal had already been left for him. A plate with a good stack of thinly cut strips of lamb meat sat steaming in the middle of the table, along with a glass pitcher containing a greenish brown liquid. He was seated with an empty plate in front of him, along with a clean mug, a knife and a fork.

"Help yourself to the broiled lamb and tea." She told him.

Atom reached over and stabbed himself a strip of the meat with his fork and dropped in onto his plate. He cut a piece off and put it into his mouth and started to chew. The meat was tender and juicy, with a spicy taste. The tea tasted mild, not sweet, tart, or bitter. He ate slowly, placing two more strips of the meat on his plate after finishing off the first.

"Thank you." Atom said, "this is actually quite good. How is it prepared?"

"The monks do our kitchen work." Rebeca informed him. "The lamb meat is marinated in the tea overnight and is seasoned with the pollen of the Teska tree flowers before being broiled over a hardwood fire. The tea you are drinking is made from the leaves of the Teska tree, enhanced by the juice of the Teska tree fruit."

"So you are still drugging me?" Atom realized as he finished eating what was on his plate.

"We are slowly building up your tolerance to the Elixir." She said. "Once you have been prepared I will test you on the full strength of the holy spice. If you are truly the promised one that we have been waiting for, the final question of the universe will be answered as has been foretold."

Atom tried to get up but he felt his legs becoming like rubber. Once again his vision blurred and he realized that once again he had been given a strong dose of the psychotic hallucinogenic drug, this time laced in the food and drink. Atom leaned back in the chair and gripped the bottoms of the cushion tightly with his fists to keep from falling out of it and onto the floor. His mind drifted back in time and he was able to access memories from before his reincarnation in this world.

His body melted away and he found himself shrinking in size. He looked up though very young eyes that had only just opened for the very first time. Though his vision was blurry, he felt a strong attachment for the face that filled his sight. He was being lifted by a pair of large and strong but gentle hands. His body was wrapped tightly in a swaddling blanket. He reached out with his arms to touch the face of the person that he knew was his mother.

Hoshie opened her eyes and saw her infant son, and she smiled despite the pain of the incision in her lower abdomen where the C-section had been performed to give birth to her child. Tobio held on to her for dear life as the nurse tried to separate them. He cried with all of his might as she carried him away to place him in the incubator. Feeling the pain of compassion, the nurse brought the tiny preemie back to his mother where the baby once again wrapped his arms around her face. Tobio stopped his crying and soon fell asleep, basking in his mothers love.

Atom's mind then left the moment of the birth of his original soul, to find himself elsewhere. He was standing upright in a glass tube with wires and electrodes attached all over his body. The smell of ozone filled his nostrils as his eyes opened for the first time. He saw a double vision of a man wearing a laboratory coat, a man with a prominent roman nose, a head full of dark hair, and a puffy beard on his chin. "Tobio!" the man cried, "Do you see me?" The glass tube was raised and the wires fell off of his body. "Come here, son!" the man ordered. Tobio's legs wobbled as he took his first step, nearly falling. He lost his balance on the second step and pitched forward in the mans waiting arms. "Tobio my son! You've returned to me!" he cried hugging him. Tobio wrapped his arms around his father and sobbed, "Dad!"

The ground shook around him as he stood on the narrow walkway between the two towers. All around him the building was crumbling as explosions went off everywhere. "Dad, Don't die!" Atom yelled out. He walked toward his father who stood next to the control tower, holding the deadly ring in his right hand. "Keep away from me!" the man yelled back, "I don't want to destroy you!"

Atom ignored his father and took another step as the ring shot a bolt of energy at him, burning his skin. "I can save you!" he yelled "Please let me!"

Once again the man gripped the ring and blasted Atom with a burst of energy that caused him to stumble and nearly fall. Yet, Atom continued his advance toward his father. "I forgive you Father!" he cried wrapping his arms around the deranged scientist. Dr. Tenma dropped the ring and it rolled away, falling off the walkway towards the abyss below. Overcome by Atom's emotional outburst, Dr. Tenma embraced Atom in his own arms. The walkway began to crumble, Atom blasted skyward with his father in his arms, carrying both of them to safety.

Time shifted again and Atom stood on the raised platform of the Bimah with his son as the boy read the portion of the Torah that he'd practiced for the past few months. His wife Cora, and their younger daughter sat in the front pews looking up at them. The happy moment faded as Atom now found himself returning the the limo after shoveling the last pile of dirt into Cora's grave. He'd outlived his human wife, and his son and daughter had their own families, now grown, as well.

Atom's grip on the chair eased as his vision cleared. Tears dripped from his eyes, falling onto the floor where a sizable puddle of them already lay. He blew his nose in the sleeve of his robe.

"Why did you do that to me?" he asked.

"Did you see your past?" Rebeca asked, "Do you know who you are?"

"Yes." Atom said. "I did have some memories of my past when I was resurrected, but only bits and pieces. Whatever was in the drugs that you laced my food with and forced me to smoke in that pipe earlier has unlocked it all."

"So you know who you were in your past life." Rebeca stated.

"No." Atom said curtly. "Not in my past live, but both of my lives. I remember dying once, and being reborn before I was resurrected in this world. This is the third body my soul has inhabited."

"That almost confirms it." Rebeca told him. "The prophesy tells us that the One who will lead us in the end time will do so in his third life."

"I still don't believe in your religion," Atom told her. "If you are to convince me, I need to know more about this prophesy and the history of your order."

"Very well." Rebeca said, "I owe you that. Come with me into the sanctuary and I will explain all that you ask."

* * *

_Twenty Four._

**A**rmed with Cobalts devices, Atlas, Mars, Titan and Cobalt made their way towards the castle. The gate barring their way into the courtyard was locked shut with a huge heavy padlock. Cobalt lifted the lock up to get a closer look at it and laughed to himself. It was a ward lock which took a large flag shaped key. Cobalt had come prepared, he removed a small case from his pocket, and from that extracted several different sized skeleton keys. He selected one that looked about the right size and carefully inserted it into the lock. He wiggled the key around while slowly turning it. The lock snapped open in his hand. "Piece of cake." he said.

"OK everyone, check your equipment." Cobalt instructed. The four of them powered on the gizmos that Cobalt had provided. They inserted the buds into their ears and fingered the pistol like transducers in their pockets. "OK then, let's sneak inside."

They kept close to the wall of the castle looking for a way in. Atlas spotted a monk standing guard at a back entrance and crept up on him. He pulled a rag from his pocket and held it over the monks face long enough for the vapors from the either soaked cloth to render the poor man unconscious. Atlas gently lowered his victim to the ground. "OK, follow me." he motioned.

The sound of voices chanting in the distance warned them that some members of the clergy were ahead of them. They passed a small dimly lit smoke filled room where five of the priests were meditating, Fortunately the emanations of the sonic devices that the four of them carried with them seemed to be working to mask their presence from the ears of the clergy.

As they continued on their way they noticed the ceiling becoming higher as they approached what appeared to be a large chamber. Now they found themselves in the main entrance area of the castle, the huge doors that could be seen from the road were barred from the inside by two large timbers resting on hooks in the door and the walls. A large wooden chandelier hung from the ceiling above them, most of the candles in it had gone out and the few remaining ones gave off a spooky light. Not far from where they stood was the entrance to a room with a high ceiling topped by a glass domed skylight. The door was open a crack allowing them to peek inside.

**A**tom stood upon the raised platform at the altar of the sanctuary. Rebeca opened a large book that lay on the angled table. "This is the bible of our order." She told him. "It tells the story our race, and that of the universe as was handed down to us by the ancients."

"By "Our Race" I assume you mean the order of the priesthood." Atom asked.

"No, I mean the human race." Rebeca explained. "That includes you and the three others that were resurrected along with you at the same time. It includes everyone in Village Town, and everyone else that has entered this world."

"What world is this?" Atom asked. "My family and I came from a planet called Earth. I have no idea how long ago that was, or if our home world still exists."

"The answers to your questions might be found in our history." Rebeca said. "If you are the 'One' and you fulfill your destiny as our savior, you will know the answers to all of your questions, and every question that ever was."

At that moment Atlas, Mars and Titan pushed their way into the room, slamming the door open.

"What is the meaning of this intrusion!" Rebeca cried out, modulating her voice. When she noticed that it had no effect on the intruders she emitted a harsh shrill cry and glared her eyes at them in defiance. Cobalt walked in and calmly aimed the pistol mounted transducer at her and pulled the trigger. Rebeca grabbed her gut and fell towards the floor in pain. Atom clamped his hands over his ears, for he too felt waves of retching pain, though not nearly as strong as the priest.

"Turn about is fair play, I'd say." Cobalt told her, as he shut down his weapon. "We've come for our brother, release him or I'll really put you in pain."

"You don't understand!" Rebeca pleaded. "Your brother may very well hold the key to our future!"

"Why don't you let ME decide!" Atom yelled. "Let me study your history and this prophecy of yours. If you can convince me that I am this divine 'one' I will submit myself to the rest of your testing."

Rebeca sighed as she resigned herself to the inevitable. "Very well, I agree to your terms. But please let me teach you our history and explain the prophecy to all of you!"

Cobalt nodded. "As a scientist and an engineer I have an open mind. If Atom is willing to go along with your testing, I will be accept his decision, provided I am certain that he wasn't coerced into making it."

With that, Cobalt walked over to Atom and placed a pair of transducers into his ears, and attached the cable to the extra device he had brought with him. He powered it on and looked at the expression on his brothers face.

"What are those works of the devil?" Rebeca yelled out.

"I've figured out how the priesthood uses their trained voices to control a persons mind." Cobalt told her. "And it was easy to figure out how to counter such control. These devices are tuned to various sound frequencies that you use to effect your influence on others and they create destructive feedback to nullify them. They can also fight back by throwing it right back into your faces. Just a recreation of 20th century Earth electronics."

"**Y**ou can put those devices aside," Rebeca promised them, "I give you my word that I won't attack you." Cobalt turned to look at Atom who nodded. "I trust her." he said.

Cobalt, Atlas, Mars, and Titan advanced towards the altar where a large book was sitting on a slanted table. Rebeca opened the old volume. "This is the bible of the people, entrusted to the order of the priesthood thousands of years ago." She said. "It contains the history of this planets civilization, and the origins of our order."

Atom and Cobalt got their first look at the old text. Surprisingly it was written in script that resembled 21st century Earth writing in that the characters were those used in most American and European languages, but included the extended characters containing accent marks, and also many of those from the Germanic and Cyrillic languages. Rebeca started to read from the beginning of the text, though Atom realized that he could understand the words himself.

"In the beginning God created the Universe. The All Mighty God spat out an egg, and the universe exploded into being. Billions of stars, and worlds condensed from Gods breath, and the supreme being saw that it was good. Upon many of the worlds he created life. Oceans teeming with life condensed from the clouds, tiny invisible beings, fish, insects, plants, trees, and land animals according to their kind.

God looked upon what he had created, and saw that it was good, but that something was missing. Upon one of the worlds he created man in his own image. He gave mankind dominion over all of the creatures on this world, and on all worlds. He said unto his creation, 'honor me and follow my commandments. Take custodianship over the world which I have given ye, and be fruitful and multiply. Honor each other and respect each other for I have created you as equals.'

Time and time again, mankind sinned and disobeyed the commandments of God. The All Mighty was patient with his creations, and from time to time would remind them of their sins by causing terrible disasters upon the Earth. When mankind realized that they were wandering from the right path and mended their ways they were rewarded with good times, when they again strayed from God's path they suffered for it.

Man plundered the riches of his world, and dared to take upon himself powers that were reserved for the All Mighty. He modified his own creation, and his numbers increased beyond his world's ability to sustain him. Mankind left the original world to take dominion over others as The All Mighty intended him to. Human kind was scattered among the stars as the Universe grew old. The stars grew dim and one by one flickered out until only the oldest stars remained, for the Lord had created them to be eternal.

Many of the worlds drifted free of their dead suns in the cold void of the Universe. These worlds were frozen in time, the life on them waiting to be reborn. God caused one such world to drift into the sphere of an eternal star, and he allowed life to begin anew. Upon this world he left the souls of a few of his deserving pious creations.

'Take dominion over this world and redeem yourselves so ye may live in the next Universe' the lord commanded. 'The women shall rule over ye, for they shall have the power to receive my commands. Thy shall not again attempt to mimic me by creating life or thought in your own image, or I shall surly banish thee from the next creation.'

Mankind inhabited the new world and he obeyed his master for a time. But once again mankind dared to mimic his creator. Mankind brought about destruction upon his fellow men, and death rained from the skies. God brought forth the holy tree of life, and commanded the priesthood to partake of it. He commanded them to enforce his will and guide the people towards the path of righteousness so they might be spared. All machines of war and and those that mimicked God's creations were destroyed. 'No one shall create such again under the pain of death' the Lord decreed. My priesthood shall rule over this and they shall be holy.'

'But when shall we be redeemed?' the people asked. 'Thy shall await a savior which I shall send.' The Lord replied. 'Ye shall know him because he shall be reborn in the valley from a previous life for a second time. His soul will have two parts, one of which will be tainted, but which will have been made pure by his own deeds. He shall eat the fruit of the holy tree and will not perish as all other males shall. He will have the vision beyond sight to guide ye into the next Creation.' The Lord commanded.

**R**ebeca closed the book. "What I've read is the summation of our history. The rest of the Bible has many other stories and commandments in it that are part of the eulogy used in our prayers and ceremonies. You might want to study those parts later, Atom." She said, "But it is forbidden for your friends to read them unless they have taken vows to the church."

Cobalt remained deep in thought. He scratched his head before speaking. "I can see why you might believe that Atom is your Savior." Cobalt explained. "The description does fit him, for among us he is unique."

"The six of you, for that includes a woman who is not among us, were not human in your previous existence. You were all damnations created by sinners." she said.

"If by that you mean we were machines that could think," Cobalt said, "You are correct. Atom however was created in the image of a young person that died a tragic death. His soul, as the term is used in your mythology, was patterned from the memories and thoughts of this child. Atom actually did die twice, this is his third reincarnation."

"Does the bible explain that?" Atom asked. "Does it tell us why we are being brought back to life on this world?"

"Actually some of the later sections in the bible do give us a clue." Rebeca said, "But only you will be privileged to read them, Atom. That is, if you follow down the path that you were foretold to."

"I will allow you to test me." Atom replied. "But I will not remain here as your captive. Let me come back at my own free will, when I am ready."

"Very well." Rebeca said. She opened a panel on the altar and removed a large Earthen ware jar. "Prepare yourself some of the holy tea at each meal and sip it slowly," she said. "Your body will adapt to its power and you will be able to control your visions, instead of them controlling you. When you have finished all of this tea you will be ready for the next step. Please understand however that time is short. Your task as the promised one must begin very shortly, and you must be ready."

Atom took the jar from her. Rebeca escorted the four of them out of the castle and bade them leave. She now was certain that Atom was the One. She had been waiting patently long enough, she could wait a bit longer if need be. Still, time was growing short. Elder Mother was growing weak. Rebeca knew that very soon now, she would take her place and would need to provide the seed for the continuation of everything. To do that she would need the 'One', which she was sure Atom to be.

* * *

_Twenty __Five__._

**M**ars kept quiet until he and Cobalt returned to the workshop. Atom and Atlas went their separate ways home.

"You actually believe that crap?" He asked.

"I've found that many religions have their mythology rooted in some truthfulness." Cobalt told him. "Certainly the description of creation in this text mirrors the fact of the big bang. If we are to take other parts of it literally, we are now hundreds of billions of years into the future from the point where we departed from our former lives, maybe as much as a trillion years into the future. The sun that this planet orbits is a red dwarf that is only now beginning to move along the latter half of the main sequence. Such suns could have been created at the very beginning of the universe, shortly after the first clouds of hydrogen cooled into existence from the super hot soup of subatomic particles that were spat out of the universe's explosive birth. Red dwarfs consume themselves at such a slow rate, such that even though they are of such low mass, they could survive for several trillion years."

"Well what about the part involving a second creation?" Mars asked. "What nonsense is that?"

"I can recall some facts about cosmology that I studied in my former existence." Cobalt started. "The big bang theory had been accepted as fact and from there many attempts at extrapolating the fate of the Universe were theorized. It all depended on several magical constants to balance what ever set of equations you used, and a good guess at the total mass of the universe. If the numbers balanced one way the expansion of the universe would slow down eventually and then the motion would reverse. Some wonks thought that at this point time would run backwards as all events were undone and the universe collapsed into a 'big crunch', to be followed an instant later by another big bang. This was the oscillating universe theory. It had the nice ring to it of being eternal, it meant that the universe had always been, and always would be."

"But that's not what's going to happen, is it?" Mars asked.

"Back in our time we still didn't really know." Cobalt said. "The total mass of the universe is rather hard to estimate, and when some of the observations didn't match up with accepted theories certain fudge factors were added to the mix. That's when the idea of Dark Matter and Dark Energy were dredged up to explain why the expansion of the universe didn't seem to be slowing, but rather was actually accelerating. So it appeared that there might not be enough positive mass in the universe to slow the expansion and bring about a big crunch. I think that might be more palatable to me, the idea of time running backwards and things being undone is rather upsetting. In fact, it can sound rather bizarre when you think about it. Imagine being born at an old age by being dug up out of your grave. Further image dying by being shoved back into your mother's vagina, and your father extracting the seed from her via inverse sexual intercourse nine months later."

"Yeah, or going to the bathroom to literally take a shit!" Mars giggled.

"If the universe is doomed to keep expanding, eventually all the stars would fade from view because the distances between them would become so vast that light would not have had enough time to travel between them." Cobalt added.

"But that's not possible because the stars can't move apart from each other faster than light!" Mars argued.

"Ah, but the stars aren't moving, space is expanding." Cobalt explained. "The equations show that space itself can expand faster than light. By the time I was at the end of my life living on Mars, this possibility seemed the most likely. The bible passage we just heard seems to agree with the constant expansion of the universe, and a slow heat death as entropy winds down the clock of time and all energy has been consumed. There is however an even more bizarre possibility for the end of the universe. If the balance between dark and light energy is at a critical proportion, and if certain cosmic constants are set just so, the expansion of the universe will accelerate beyond space and into time itself. Not only will all of the stars and planets be accelerated from each other, but so shall all of matter down to every subatomic particle. All matter will be ripped apart and the universe will become an infinitely thin, vast cloud of nothing."

"WHAT!" Mars cried out. "Even us?"

"Everything will be ripped apart." Cobalt said. "This scenario was referred to as the 'big rip'." Now that we are living in what is closer to the end of the universe than the beginning, it may be possible to observe what is happening and know the answer for sure. I've only just begun to collect visual data with the telescope, and to crunch the numbers. While I've only just barely started to gather observational data, I'm convinced that the end of the universe is not far off. I don't have the answer yet, but I think I will be able to figure it out."

"And what if we are heading for a big ripoff?" Mars asked, "How could the 'One' these witches are calling their Savior lead mankind out of that?"

"I have a theory about that based on the old notion of 'string theory'." Cobalt said. "Our universe may actually be only one of many. The entire framework of all of creation, something that is beyond our ability to comprehend, may consist of an infinitive pair of membranes kept separate from each other by balanced forces. These 'branes' sometimes come into contact and react violently like matter and antimatter. When they do a big bang forms at the point of contact creating a universe. Eventually these universes rip themselves apart and the process heals the rupture in the branes point of initial contact. On the scale of time that the maxiverse, which is what I will call the infinite exists at, the existence of our universe lasted for as much time as a pimple takes to form and pop."

"Oh so the universe is a zit on the face of God?" Mars asked.

Cobalt face palmed at the suggestion.

"Anyway," Cobalt continued, "I think that there may be localizations in the space time of the universe at the moment where the big rip accelerates to the final event where one might find a safe haven. I think at the moment where the branes are finished healing some bits of the old universe might get sucked up and be spat out into another."

"But you'd never survive the next Big Bang." Mars argued.

"No you wouldn't." Cobalt said. "But maybe the essence of your existence might be incorporated into the fabric of the new universe. Maybe, your consciousness might form part of the matrix of the new cosmos. Perhaps the witches believe that someone will place themselves into the matrix of creation by going out into space to be at the exact spot required to liberate their soul into the matrix of creation."

"Maybe, if you did that you would become God." Mars thought out loud.

"You know, that might explain what God really is." Cobalt said.

**M**ars gave Cobalt a mock salute as he walked out of the workshop. "That's about all the philosophy I can handle in one sitting." He said. "Good night."

Cobalt finished cleaning up and turned out the lights. He walked back to his bedroom deep in thought. He remembered the lectures he attended at MIT dealing with Cosmology and Physics, and a long forgotten face appeared out of the fog of his memory.

Cobalt hadn't been the only robot attending classes at the famous institute in Cambridge Massachusetts. He recalled a classmate of his who had done his thesis trying to prove a wild hypothesis based on a set of equations that he claimed could be related. Photar was attempting to prove that Einstein's attempt at a unified field equation was possible after all. In doing so, he added the magnetic forces into the mix, along with those of gravity, and the moment of inertia within the atoms themselves.

"G=2(PC/BU)**2 is the unifying equation," Photar explained. "I believe that the Blackett-Dirac hypothesis clearly shows that the field strength of a single electronic pole in motion relates to that of the magnetic as well as the force of the graviton."

Cobalt felt sorry for his classmate who was never able to totally prove that his manipulation of the equation actually did relate to what Einstein had been trying to put together. Photar's use of the rogue equation dredged up from some forgotten physics text book was the relationship between gravity _G_, the magnetic moment _P_, the angular momentum _U_, the speed of light _C, _and a correction factor _B_ assumed to be 0.25.

Cobalt had seen something in that equation that Photar and the professors had missed, and he kept it to himself because he was certain that it had to be pure nonsense. Basically, if one applied enough angular momentum to a given mass within a strong enough magnetic field, the result could drive the G term negative. In theory this would result in an anti-gravity field, assuming that the graviton actually had an anti particle, something that traditional physics dictum denied. He had asked Photar in a joke what the effect would be on any poor electron caught in the rotating field of a machine built to make use of that equation. His classmate simply laughed saying "I guess that electron would be spun dizzy."

* * *

_Twenty Six._

**T**he sun was high in the sky when Atom entered the observatory to find his brother sitting at his desk examining a stack of photographic plates. "It's been several months now that you've been attached to that instrument." Atom said. "Any ideas yet?"

"I know the answer." Cobalt sighed. "I simply just can't prove it. I can see where the numbers are leading, I just don't have the exact equations down to the last decimal point."

"Doesn't matter." Atom said. "You're the only scientist alive on this world that could understand the math anyway. You don't need to prove it to anyone but yourself, whatever the answer is."

Atom's eyes sparked with a dark green iridescence from the tea that he had been consuming. He'd been increasing the dosage of the beverage slowly, as he was no longer driven into a near comatose state by its effects. He could now control his visions, and he had seen far beyond the confines of the world they were on.

"Somehow I think I know what you have figured out." Atom told his brother. "For I have already seen a glimpse of it."

"I don't know how much longer we have." Cobalt told him. "The universe is destined to rip itself apart. The process is probably already be underway. The patterns in the background grain of the universe are visible in my telescope but hard to measure. I might need an instrument may times larger to get a quantitative answer, or perhaps I need to figure out another way to analyze the images I've already collected."

"Exactly what I've seen as well." Atom replied. "I'm sure the witches have seen it too, though they don't understand their visions because they have no knowledge of the science. They only know that God is going to let the universe die, and that some of the righteous may make it over to the other side."

"So you've already begun to be transformed into this 'One' and can see these visions?" Cobalt asked.

"I've already tasted the elixir of life." Atom replied. "The tea hadn't quite prepared me for it, I slept for two days afterwards. I won't take a second dose of that for another week. Meanwhile I'm now brewing the tea at double strength."

"You really believe in this stuff, don't you?"

"I have proof." Atom said. "Something tangible that you might understand."

"Oh?" Cobalt asked.

"What if you knew what world we were on?"

"You mean where in the galaxy were are?" Cobalt asked. "Wouldn't matter, everything we once knew is long gone."

"Maybe not." Atom replied. "Come with me."

Atom and Cobalt made their way back to the castle, and into the sanctuary. "I've now got free rein of the place." Atom told his brother. "I have access to the holiest of the holies."

Cobalt followed his brother onto the raised platform of the altar. Against the wall was a heavy curtain stitched with golden thread. Atom pulled the curtain aside to reveal a large upright cabinet with two heavy golden doors. He opened them to reveal an airtight door locked with a combination lock. Atom dialed in the secret numbers and broke the seal on the door. He opened this compartment which housed a relic wrapped in a silken gold cloth. Atom lifted the object and gently carried it over to the slanted table. He unwrapped the object to reveal an ancient scroll. The two spools holding the leather like parchment were made of wood that had become petrified from age. The parchment had been carefully treated to preserve it.

"If you knew how old this was you'd never believe it." Atom laughed. "The fact that this still exists is almost proof of the existence of God." He unrolled the scroll to reveal writing in an ancient language that the priesthood did not understand. "The witches don't know that I can actually read this." Atom laughed. Cobalt looked at the words and understood. They were ancient Hebrew letters, for the scroll was a Torah.

"The priesthood claims that this scroll was found in ruins on the other side of this world during the ancient days when the very first people on this planet were migrating out to expand their civilization. That was before the wars that nearly destroyed everything, and the priesthood became the ruling power." Atom said. "If we take the word of their bible literally that this world was reborn from the ashes of another solar system that fell apart when its sun died, then this planet is known to us."

"We're on Earth." Cobalt gasped.

**A**tom's face contorted in pain for a brief moment, and then returned to normal. "I think we should get over to Titan and Urans place, she might need our help." Atom said.

"The twins?" Cobalt asked.

"Yes, she's about to give birth." Atom replied. "I can now read my sisters thoughts, and I feel her pains. I can only imagine how it will be after I take the final steps."

"She's early." Cobalt said. "I know that twins usually don't go full term, but she's still more than several months early."

"No, the babies are full term." Atom said. "You do know why."

Cobalts face turned white. "Yes I guess I do," He said. "It's the time dilation."

Cobalt drove the electric wagon over the rough roads towards the estate where Uran and Titan lived. Uran was lying in bed sweating while Titan sponged her down with cool water. Atom placed his right hand over his sisters lower abdomen and frowned.  
"Tetsu is in breech and he's blocking the birth canal for his sister." Atom said, "I can see it in my mind.  
You'll going to have to turn him around so she can deliver him normally. Either that, or You'll have to perform a cesarean section."

Cobalt rolled up his sleeves ran to the kitchen where Titan had large pot of water boiling on the stove. He filled the sink with the scalding hot water and grabbed a bar of lye soap to scrub his hands.

"Since when are you a doctor?" Titan asked.

"Don't worry, I'll guide your hands." Atom said leaning over his sisters body. "I can see inside with my mind."

Uran cried out with pain as another involuntary contraction rolled over her.

Cobalt inserted his hand into Uran's cervix, now dilated nearly to the point required for birth.

"A little further," Atom said, "you're almost there."

Cobalt felt the boys feet and he gently moved them around into position.

"Be careful of the cord!" Atom warned him, "Don't tangle it around his legs."

"I can feel it." Cobalt replied. He drew his hand back and felt the infants head.

"You're almost there." Atom said. "Just a few centimeters to the right."

Cobalt withdrew his hand. A moment later Uran cried out as another massive contraction hit and Tetsu's head crowned into view. "He's coming!" Titan cried out "Push!"

Uran screamed as she bore down on her muscles to expel the baby into her husband's waiting hands.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"My God!" Uran laughed, "He's got your lungs!"

"Yeah I guess he does." Titan agreed.

Two minutes later Argon was born with a smile on her face. Cobalt and Titan cleaned up the infants and wrapped them in swaddling after Titan cut their umbilical cords with a pair of scissors and tied off the ends. Uran held both of her new babies next to her, one in each arm. Each had their tiny arms wrapped around her neck.

"Congratulations!" Cobalt said, slapping Titan on the back. "Too bad we don't have any Cigars."

* * *

_Twenty Seven._

**R**ebeca knew it was time. Atom was ready for the process that would either kill him, or transform him into the male all seeing 'One' that would guide them towards the next creation. Elder Mother now lay upon her death bed in her quarters rapidly approaching the end of her life. As soon as she breathed her last it would be Rebeca's task to undertake the transformation into the next Elder Mother. First she would oversee Atom's ordeal, she hoped that the Elder Mother would hang on long enough to allow her to guide Atom along his way before she had to follow him along her path.

**A**tom stood in the conclave chamber surround by twelve priests. Rebeca handed him the goblet filled with the elixir of life which he slowly drank. The strong potion no longer deprived him of his consciousness as he had now developed a tolerance to its drugging effects. He was able to see beyond his vision on his command, or suppress the effect. His eyes glowed a brilliant irredentist green color from the elixir's effects, a color that had now become a permanent feature.

Rebeca was anxious to perform the final test upon Atom. If he lived through the ordeal he would be transformed into a being like none other that had ever lived in recent times. He would be the male equivalent of an Elder Mother, but even more potent.

"You're ready for the final step, Atom" Rebeca told him.

Atom nodded in agreement. One of the priests handed Rebeca a silver box. She opened it and looked inside, then held the open container in front of Atoms reach and nodded to him. Atom removed the golden colored ripened ovary and brought it to his lips. He hesitated for a moment, and then took a bite of the Teska tree fruit. Reserved only for the conversion of a priest to an Elder Mother, the fruit of the Teska tree was the holiest of the artifacts that the order had. The powerful drug contained within the raw ripe fruit was usually fatal to any male that consumed it. Atom swallowed the mouthful of the soft flesh, he held back the gag reflex triggered by the nauseating bitter tartness of it.

At first nothing happened and he feared that he would have to take another bite of the evil tasting substance. Suddenly his vision went dark and he lost all feeling in his body. He fell to the floor, but was caught by Rebeca and two of the other priests, who gently carried his limp form over to a waiting cot. Atom's heart stopped beating and his lungs refrained from filling with air. His lips turned blue, and his skin grew cold.

The priests quickly lifted him and lowered him into a tub filled with mixture of ice and brine. His body quickly chilled down to below freezing. Rebeca stood over his lifeless body and prayed. She expected something like this to happen, she had seen it before.

**A**tom floated in the void and watched as the Universe exploded into being. He was outside the cosmic ball of fire as the big bang created all of space-time. Quickly the primordial soup of subatomic particles cooled before his eyes and became transparent. Millions of years flew by in seconds as the first stars were born, and died in explosive deaths throwing their guts out into nebula. He watched as one cloud of dust condensed into a flat disk. The center of the disk started to spin and condense, and begin to glow. Smaller bodies formed out of the outer parts of the disk, the inner ones small rocky worlds, the outer ones larger gas giants. The new solar system had nine planets, until the fifth one from the sun wandered too close to the sixth and exploded leaving a ring of asteroids in its place.

Atom saw the Earth take form and watched as life sprung forth on its surface. He witnessed Mankind's exodus from his home world as the planet slowly died from mistreatment by the creatures that had taken dominion over it. The sun expanded into a red giant as the nearby Andromeda galaxy collided with the Milky way. Suns bounced off of each other and the Earth was ejected into deep space.

He saw his frozen home world captured by a larger rouge planet, and the two of them entered orbit around an ancient dwarf star. Earth's frozen surface warmed as cometary bodies locked into orbit around the system crashed down onto its surface. New oceans formed and spores awakened. Life returned to the old world as plants and fish began to take hold. A field of pink and green light to shape on the surface and several human like forms opened their eyes for the first time in a trillion years.

Atom felt an intelligence though out the void of space. It entered his mind and spoke to him without using any words. The universe itself was a living being that controlled the destiny of everything within it. It had the power to create life and to renew it. It was the intelligence within the universe that had held onto his soul and that of his siblings, indeed all of mankind for the eons since they had last lived. It had resurrected them on this world. God was embedded in the universe and was part of it, he hadn't created the universe, but he had shaped it. Now the universe was coming to an end and God was instructing Atom what he need to do to insure that creation would continue.

**A**tom's vision looked forward in time. He saw the remaining galaxies recede from each other, and the stars within them grow more distant from each other. One by one the last of the main sequence stars either burned out or exploded. Only the ancient red dwarfs remained. As he watched, every star and planet evaporated as their molecules and atoms flew apart as the expansion of space extended into the infinitively small. Even subatomic particles were not immune to the effect as they too were ripped apart into even smaller quantities of pure energy. Nothing remained of the universe but a thin layer of vacuum energy, the same stuff that had brought it into being a trillion years ago.

**Y**et all was not bleak, for Atom could see bubbles in the higher dimensions between the universes. He foresaw the eruption of one of these bubbles into a burst of pure energy that would be the seed of the next creation as a new universe would explode into being. It would only lack the required intelligence, and that was where his influence was required. His presence, along with that of a few chosen others, would be the seed that would control the orderly creation and insure that the next universe would be hospitable to new intelligent life.

**R**ebeca stood vigil over Atom's frozen corpse though out the night. Several hours before dawn, she ordered the monks to carry him out of the castle and take him to the upper valley where he had awakened a little over a year ago. They laid him naked on the soft clover and left him there. Rebeca watched from her window and prayed.

During the night while Rebeca waited at her window for Atom to wake up from his death, Elder Mother breathed her last breath. The monks came for Rebeca and they prepared her for the ordeal of transformation that lay in store.

**A**n hour before the dawn's light, the valley filled with the pink and green mist. It tickled Atom's lifeless form and found its way through his nostrils and into his lungs. Atom's heart thumped slowly, returning to its normal sinus rhythm after nearly twelve hours of silence. The color returned to his skin, and his eyes opened. He sat up in the soft clover and looked down towards the Village Town. Atom slowly got to his feet and walked towards the blacksmith shop The soft clover felt good under his bare feet, the cool damp air was invigorating against his naked skin.

He now knew what he was and why he had been resurrected, and he had his purpose clearly set in his mind. He knew that he was the 'One' that the prophecy had foretold, and he would become the instrument of the final salvation of everything that ever was. A long road lay ahead for him, a quest that only he could perform. He'd contact his family later when it was time. They would also be part of the grand design that God had laid out for him. There were several bits of the puzzle that were still hidden from him. Somewhere on this planet the mechanisms required lay dormant, he would have to find them and set them into motion. The priests would play a part in it as well when the time came.

**H**e returned to his dwelling for the last time to gather what few items he'd need to take along with him. He had been transformed by the Teska fruit and his body no longer required protection from the elements, indeed it now depended on contact with the air to sustain it. He would need to walk the world naked from now on, but he would compromise slightly for the modesty of his family and friends.

In a corner of the shop was a station where he repaired boots and saddles. He selected a thick piece of leather and cut himself a pair of soles. He used a sharp awl to punch some holes in them and threaded them with leather laces. He tied the custom sandals onto his feet and smiled. The simple footwear would protect the bottoms of his feet until they developed enough callus for him to walk barefoot.

Next, he took a thinner and softer piece of leather and pounded it into shape with a wooden mallet. He cut a cup shaped piece from it and applied three thin leather straps. He tried it on for fit, the G-String just barely covered his manhood sufficiently for the comfort of others who would look at him.

Atom wrote a note and left it where Atlas would find it when he showed up at the shop in a few hours. He explained that he was leaving and that the shop would now belong to him. He wished Atlas well, and asked him to keep an eye on his family until he would see the again.

He left the shop taking with him only a few tools in the form of a Swiss Army style knife, scissors, a small Axe, a spool of fishing line, a few hooks and a straight razor, a mess kit consisting of a small pot, pan, plates, and some spoons and forks. and some provisions in the form of dried fruit and meats. His inner vision told him that his family was at Titan and Uran's place, and he went there to say goodbye.

**U**ran was startled at his appearance, standing in the doorway nearly naked, his eyes glowing with their brilliant green iridescence.

"What's happened to you?" Titan asked.

"He's been transformed." Uran said. "The witch has had her way."

"Rebeca was right all along." Atom smiled. "I am the Chosen 'One'. I can no longer feel the cold, I don't require any covering over my body, in fact I would now wither and die if I wasn't totally exposed to the air. I can see my destiny, and I know our fate. I must leave now on a quest to find the past, and the road to our future. I will send for you when it is time. Goodbye, until we meet again."

Atom walked over to the two cribs where his infant nephew and niece were sleeping. He reached in and gently picked each of them up and kissed them. "Sweet Tetsu and Argon, my your lives be long and pleasant!" he sighed, knowing that the end of everything was not far away.

He reached out toward Uran and hugged her for a long time, he then embraced Titan and Cobalt in turn. "I must leave you for now," He said, "I have a long rocky road to travel ahead of me, and I will find the answers to our questions." He then turned to Uran and said, "You will hear from me in your mind. You will know what to do when the time comes and you will explain it to Cobalt."

Atom turned to Cobalt and spoke to him, "Your are correct in you assumptions about the fate of the cosmos, the end is very near. This planet's system is not far from the epicenter of the big rip and the next big bang. We will need to journey through space to reach the exact location so that we can become part of it."

"But how?" Cobalt asked. "I could never build a space craft in time, not with the level of technology available to me at the moment."

"The means to do so already exists on this planet." Atom said. "I must find it. You will need to build a vessel to travel up the river to meet me when the time comes. It will need to be a fast ship for I don't think we have much time and I don't know how far I will need to travel. You will find everything we need within the old buildings that you are now exploring."

Cobalt nodded and embraced his brother as if for the last time.

Atom walked out the door to the house and closed it slowly behind him. He headed towards the river and followed it upstream.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Book Three – All there ever will be.**_

_Twenty Eight._

**R**ebeca was given the fruit of the Teska tree and she took a bite of it. The priests lay her down on the bed and held a prayer vigil by her bedside. She lay in a coma for two days before she again opened her eyes. Now a full fledged Elder Mother, the order was her responsibility. She reached out with her mind looking for Atom, but she couldn't find him. He had left the valley and had disappeared. His mind was too powerful to be found if he didn't want to be seen. Rebeca called the priesthood into session to join minds with her to search for Atom. They weren't able to locate him, but they saw that he had followed the river northward towards the forbidden lands. Rebeca could see in her own mind's vision that the key to their reaching their destiny was buried in the abandoned ruins that lay in that direction.

She was sure that Atom was alive and he had taken up the task that God had directed him towards. He would return in his own time when he was ready, or he would contact her with his mind. She knew there was nothing else to do but wait.

* * *

**R**ock climbed down from the tree with an armful of the fruit. As he turned to the road he found himself surround by a dozen or so monks who were armed with sharpened sticks and rocks.

"Ye were warned!" They shouted as they began to stone him. Rock was struck in the chest and arms by the heavy missiles. He dropped the forbidden fruit he had picked and tried to run as a spear brushed past him knocking him down. He looked up to see the monks preparing to finish him off when a loud voice boomed out behind them.

"Leave that man alone!"

The monks turned to see a nearly naked man staring at them with his brilliant green irredentist eyes. They took sight of him and dropping their weapons laid themselves prone on the ground closing their eyes to avoid contact with his.

"Go!" Atom commanded. The monks got to their feet, still avoiding his gaze and ran up the road towards the castle.

Rock was startled to see Atom. The two pointy cowlicks of hair on his head looked familiar, but the rest of his appearance was totally alien to him.

Atom looked deeply into Rock's mind and saw a purpose for his being. He would require the mans help to locate the long lost technology needed to lift them off the surface of the world and enter the heart of the cosmic egg that would restart creation. Rock would require careful attention to bend him to Atom's will, but Atom knew what he had to do.

"You will come with me." Atom told Rock in a modulated voice.

"Well who are you, where are we going, and why the hell should I?" Rock demanded.

"I am the one who just saved you from a horrible death." Atom answered in the modulated voice that grabbed Rock by the back of his mind. "I am going on a long quest to find the answers to the fate of the universe, and you are coming along because I need your assistance. You also have no choice in the matter!"

Atom's voice removed Rocks will to fight, and calmed him. He suddenly found himself powerfully attracted to Atom as he saw his well tuned muscles under his taught skin, and he stared at Atoms G-String and admired the shape under it.

Atom headed towards the river, and Rock obediently followed. For the time being he was under Atom's mind control, and he accepted the novelty of the quest that he had been drafted to partake.

They followed the river for several hours before stopping to fish for dinner. Atom dug in the ground with his bare hands for some worms to use as bait, and found a scrap of wood to use as a float, and a rock as a weight. He cast his line far out into the river while standing waist deep in the water. He caught several trout and a few bass in less than a half hour. Rock started a file and they cooked the fish using the pan in the mess kit that Atom had packed.

There was a clearing near the river not far from where they had fished with soft grass to use as bedding. "We'll sleep here for the night." Atom told Rock.

Atom showed Rock how to prepare a bed from carefully matted grass, and they lay down next to a smoldering fire after the sun had set. The night wasn't totally dark as the companion planet their world shared its orbit with refracted some sunlight though the mountains along its limb.

Rock fell asleep lying next to Atom, snoring loudly. Atom carefully got up and walked into the river to swim and wash the filth off of himself. He emerged from his bath feeling refreshed and found another spot to fall asleep.

**A**tom awakened as the first rays of the sun appeared over the river. Rock was still snoring loudly as Atom walked down to the river to catch some fish for their breakfast. He was frying them up in a pan when Rock opened his eyes and sniffed the aroma of Atoms cooking.

"Go down to the river and wash yourself off if you want any breakfast." Atom told him. Rock got out of bed and started to walk towards the water when Atom yelled out to him, "Get naked first. I want you to take a swim and get your whole self cleaned, I can smell your stench!"

Rock undressed and left his clothes in a pile on the ground where he had been sleeping. Atom watched as he ran down to the river like a teenager and jumped into the water. "At least he's enjoying himself getting clean." Atom thought. He quickly gathered up Rocks clothes and tied them up into a small tight bundle, which he then hid in the bottom of his backpack. Atom decided that he would force Rock to walk naked for awhile to humble him and make him more dependent on his protection to hone his loyalty.

About ten minutes later Rock came walking back from the river. Atom had timed things perfectly, he dropped two well fried fish into a plate and handed it to his traveling companion as soon as he had arrived.

Rock was obviously famished as he willing sat down naked on a log and wolfed down his breakfast without looking for his clothing. It wasn't until he handed Atom the empty plate that he realized his duds were missing.

"Hey what did you do with my clothes?" he asked.

"I threw them in the fire." Atom lied. "We're both going Au Natural from this point on."

"What!" Rock yelled. "That's not fair, you still have your little cover up there, and your sandals!"

"Don't worry, I didn't burn your shoes." Atom said throwing the pair of canvas loafers at him. Atom removed his G-string and stuffed it into his backpack. "See, now we are a pair!"

Rock grumbled as they continued their journey along the river, as he wasn't at all used to walking without the support of his underwear. So far there was an easy path to follow running along side the waterway, and the river was wide enough that it was difficult to make out any landmarks on the other side. Atom's inner sight had told him that they would have to journey several more days before they reached any sign of civilization, though he wasn't sure what they would actually find. He knew about the ancient atomic war that had laid waste to the planet, and quite possibly had wiped out all civilization except for the small pocket of which he'd been resurrected in. The weather was still comfortable enough that Rock wouldn't catch his death of cold being out naked, he'd return the man his clothing long it got any cooler. For now Atom wanted Rock to feel uncomfortable and suffer some mental anguish to keep him in his place and cement his control over him.

* * *

_Twenty __Nine__._

**U**ran brought the twins along with her to the observatory in a double baby buggy that Cobalt had built with Atlas's help. Cobalt was using a blink box to compare the changes between two photographic plates exposed several nights apart when she entered.

"Did you hear from Atom?" Cobalt asked.

The question was figurative of course, as Uran's contact with her brother had been in the from of mental images that he shared with her. "He's been traveling for a few days now with that low life Rock Holmes." Uran said. "For some reason he saved the man's life when a band of monks wanted to stone him to death for picking Teska tree fruit."

"I'm sure he knew that those trees were off limits to everyone outside of the clergy." Cobalt said. "Atom was never one to allow harm to anyone, even the worst criminals. I guess he figured the only way to keep the idiot out of harms way was to take him along with him. I can also understand him not wanting to be alone far from any human contact."

"He's not alone." Uran said. "We still have each other, even though it's mental contact over a distance."

"Not having ESP myself, I guess I can't relate to that." Cobalt sighed.

"So how's the research going?" Uran asked.

"I've been comparing the background in these plates taken over longer and longer intervals of time." Cobalt explained. "Even with the limitations of this relatively tiny instrument I can see the effect of the dark energy on the expansion of space-time. The acceleration is increasing, fast enough to actually see it on plates taken only a month or two apart. I don't think we have very much longer before the universe flies apart and takes us along for the ride."

"How long, a few years?" Uran asked.

"Much sooner than that." Cobalt said. "In fact, If I take what Atom said before he left literally, we might have much less than a year left, maybe even only a month or so, and very soon we will begin to notice the first effects of it. In fact we already have, the gestation period of your pregnancy was vastly shortened by the time dilation effect of the acceleration. I think there is a reason that we were reincarnated here, that we will play a role in the drama that will soon unfold. God, or someone like him, has a plan for us. I hope Atom has figured out exactly what that plan is, and what is required of us."

* * *

**A**tom and Rock ate the figs and berries that they had picked for their lunch. Fishing had been unproductive at the spot along the river where they had stopped, but the nearby grove had plenty of eatables available for the picking. Atom enjoyed the fare, but Rock ate his fill grumbling. "I hate you!" he yelled at Atom. "First you burn my clothes and force me to march naked, then you force me to eat this bunny food!"

"This so called bunny food is actually very healthy for you." Atom said. "You've just consumed a well balanced mix of every form of nutrient that your body requires, without excess fats, carbs, or sugars."

"I think I'm going to turn around and try and find my way back to the village." Rock said. "We haven't gone that far yet, and all I have to do is follow this damn river."

"I suppose you might make it on your own." Atom said modulating his voice. "Just don't run into any of the monks and you'll be fine. Of course you might accidentally pick some poison plants along the way and kill yourself. You do know how to tell the difference, don't you?"

Rock grumbled something as deep down he wasn't sure of how to fend for himself in the wild. Atom did seem to have the knowledge of the lay of the land. Atom's voice calmed and relaxed Rock, for the time being he was still under his control.

"Well can we rest a while?" Rock asked.

"Just for a little while." Atom said. "Until our stomachs settles down from lunch."

They now followed a trail that led inland away from the river. Atoms inner sight told him that the path along the river would become impassible in a few miles and that this inland route would bypass the few miles of quicksand like terrain. His drug enhanced sense of smell picked up the scent of wild pig, and he stopped to fashion a bow and some arrows using material from saplings growing along their path. Using techniques similar to ancient native Americans, Atom made a few arrowheads from flakes hammered out of flint and quartz rocks they found on the ground. As they marched along Atom's eagle eyes spotted movement in the undergrowth and he quickly turned and fired off an arrow. His sharp hearing told him the projectile had found his mark and he quickly ran off leaving Rock standing in place. He returned a few minutes later holding what would become 150 lbs of fresh bacon.

**A**tom quickly butchered the animal, separating the usable meat from the rest of carcass. They wrapped their provisions in heavy leaves and tied them up with vines. After another few hours of travel they came to a good spot to camp for the night and started a fire. Atom then cleaned the meat and divided it into two. Part of it they cooked on a spit over the fire, the rest was smoked and dried over the fire to preserve it and they packaged to take along for later consumption.

At lunchtime the next day they once again camped along the river front having passed the bog like area that had been the cause of their detour inland. Atom's inner sight told him they should now be within sight of the first of the abandoned cities that he had foreseen. He felt that he had managed to take most of the fight out of his companion, and that it would be safe to allow Rock to dress himself again. He reached into his backpack and pulled out the bundle of clothing that he had hidden from Rock.

"We're getting further north and the temperature is slowly getting cooler." Atom told his companion. "You might want to cover yourself up." Atom tossed the bundle at Rock who caught it in mid air.

"You bastard!" He yelled at Atom. "Why did you tell me you had burned them!"

"I needed to take your arrogance down a few notches." Atom said as he slipped his G-String back on. "I think you've cooled your jets enough. Get dressed."

Rock caught the pile and slowly dressed himself. The two travelers packed up the rest of their stuff and started out upon the trail north paralleling the path of the river.

* * *

_Thirty._

**L**amp swept the floor under the telescope in the observatory. He didn't mind being alone doing the work, but he was curious about what was going on around him. Cobalt was out for lunch, and Lamp figured that it would be easier to clean up the place with everyone gone so he wouldn't be getting in their way. He noticed the two negatives in the blink box and quickly figured out how to work the apparatus. He had decent close in eyesight without his glasses and he quickly noticed the significance of the two plates. He noticed the dates marked on the negatives and the pile of others nearby. Before long, Lamp had been swapping out the plates and making his own comparisons He noticed a pattern in the images buried deep within another.

Cobalt walked in to find Lamp's head buried in the view port of the blink box, the broom leaning against the wall, and a spotlessly swept floor, except for a large pile of dust that needed the attention of the dust bin.

"Has my janitor decided to change jobs with me?" Cobalt asked in a laughing voice.

"I'm sorry!" Lamp apologized. "I noticed what you were doing and I became curious."

"Don't worry about it." Cobalt replied. "Did you see anything that caught your interest?"

"Yeah, I think I did." Lamp said. "I was moving the plates around and I saw how they changed over a long term. I then compared two plates from different days and didn't see much of anything, until I left two of them in the same side at once by accident."

Cobalt looked at what Lamp had been just looking at. He saw the second level pattern that he had been missing.

"What the ….!" he muttered.

"Did I find something important?" Lamp asked.

"Yeah." Cobalt said. "You just showed me how blind I am. I now need to re-run all of my testing again with this new wrinkle. I think you've just discovered the very well hidden glitch in the fabric of the universe that I was looking for."

"Gee, I didn't ..." Lamp stuttered as he got back to work with the dust bin and left the room.

Uran entered with the twins in the stroller. Cobalt smiled when he saw the two infants now sitting up and actively playing with a row of large beads strung in front of them.

"So, how goes the research?" she asked.

"The blind have started to lead the blind." Cobalt told her.

"Explain?" she asked.

"Lamp was sweeping up and he started to mess around with my plates in the blink box while I was out to lunch," he explained. "somehow, he managed to try a simple double exposure comparisons between three different plates. The result shows a significant shift in the background in the third dimension that wasn't visible any other way."

"Meaning?"

"I'll have to rerun all of the tests over again." Cobalt sighed. "But if I'm right, we may have an order of magnitude less time available to us before the universe rips itself apart. I'm now sure that Atom was right, we probably have a month or two at the most before everything comes to an end. I hope Atom returns soon."

* * *

**A**tom spent most of the day harvesting enough lumber to build a raft. They had come upon a small stand of trees suitable for the construction of a water craft, and the path ahead of them had begun to narrow with no good way to proceed, except on the river itself. Rock gathered vines from the underbrush, where he was glad to be properly dressed again. Atom didn't seem to mind the undergrowth rubbing against his skin. He had become quite tan from the exposure to the sun, and Rock admired the darkened tone of his complexion.

The raft was ready as the first of the sun began to drift below the horizon. Since there wasn't any good spot to spend the night where they were, and the night sky was lit by the presence of the companion body's reflection of the sun, they decided to launch their craft and set sail to look for a suitable place to land along the river bank further down. Atom stood up and polled the bottom to push them along. The river bottom dropped off rather slowly from shore, so he could use the push pole to propel them out until the current grabbed them. He had also made two pairs of oars and had attached a rudder for steering.

They were soon far enough from shore to pick up the gentle current and now they were moving more rapidly. Atom could easily make out the shoreline on the nearest side of the river and after an hour of travel he spotted a good place to make land for the night. He instructed Rock to grab an oar and the two of them rowed from opposite sides of the raft until they hit the shallows and jumped out to push themselves aground.

After a breakfast of river trout caught by Atom, they continued their way on the water. They traveled for several hours before rounding a bend in the river where they could make out what appeared to be the remains of a large city on the horizon. A cold breeze came in causing Rock to shiver, but it didn't bother Atom in the slightest. By the end of the day, they were still a days travel from the approaching city, and once again made landfall to spend the night. They consumed the last of the smoked pig they had squirreled away and added fresh picked grapes and nuts they found growing in the wild.

* * *

**U**ran's twins were growing rapidly. Tetsu lifted himself up using his forearms and begged Titan to pick him up. When his daddy didn't arrive in time he let out a blood curdling scream that shook the windows and caused the roller shades to snap into the open position and fall out of place. The energetic lad managed to get to his feet and took a step and a half before loosing his balance and fall onto the soft carpet. Uran smiled at her son's performance. Argon was quite happy to just sit and chew on her pacifier. The children's teething had made breast feeding a bit more painful, but Uran still got great enjoyment out of it. Titan would feed one using a bottle of pre-pumped breast milk while Uran served fresh to the other. She had tried two at once, but that proved too distracting to Tetsu, who was so jealous of his sister that he'd push her away from the left boob while he was attached to the right.

**U**ran remained in mental contact with her older brother, and reported to Cobalt and Titan almost every little detail that was happening. She left out his handling of Rock, since that was Atom's own personal space.

* * *

**T**he raft finally reached the waterfront of the city. They approached what appeared to be a dock along the river. They tied themselves up next to the slip and walked towards the shore. They were now definitely in what had once been a ship yard area that served river traffic in the now abandoned city. The devastation wasn't as total as the legends had told, most of the buildings were still recognizable for what they were, and many were mostly intact. The streets were littered with debris, and small rodents could be seen scampering about. The rats at least had survived.

They entered what must have been a library for there were many books lying about on the floor next to shelves that had toppled over. Both of them began a search for any information that would tell them what this part of the planet had once been, or what had really happened. Rock came across what looked like an Atlas filled with maps. The topology of the planet had been mapped and Atom now saw just how different the Earth was since the time that he had known it.

All of the continents had merged together in a continuous band around the equator with two large oceans, one at either pole. A long river ran spiraling through the only land mass, peeling it like an apple as it dumped the water from one ocean to the other. Atom wasn't sure how that could be, however he theorized that a double layer current could exist with the water traveling in one direction along the top and the other in a reverse current at the bottom. The two layers might swap direction on a seasonal basis. He'd let Cobalt figure it out, but the map did explain the river and where it was leading them.

**T**hey continued to explore the old city, searching for anything that might be useful to them. According to the map, there were two other large urban centers further down the river, both of them larger than this one. A legend on the map indicated something special about the second city, which was the larger of the two. A heavy line on the map surrounded a portion of this city as if to indicate that the area was earmarked for a special purpose. Atom wanted to continue on, he still needed to find the lost technology that his inner sight told him was hidden in the ruins of one of the two cities, probably in the marked off section of the second. He also felt that there he would find the answers to his questions about what he was supposed to do.

Rock located a store that had usable warm clothing, and he happily exchanged the thin material he was wearing for a warmer outfit. The weather was getting colder the further north they traveled, and the summer was fading into fall. Rock handed some warm underwear towards Atom. "You might want some of these" he told his companion. "Or haven't you noticed the cold winds yet?"

"Thank you for your concern." Atom said, "But I'm quite OK the way I am. My body no longer requires external insulation from the cold. I don't know why, but I do know that I would quickly become sick if my skin were not able to breath with direct contact to the air."

* * *

_Thirty One._

**R**ebeca appeared in the doorway of Uran and Titan's house dressed in the gray robes and veil of the priesthood. She spoke softly without any inflection or modulation of her voice. Her appearance and mannerism were as nonthreatening as possible.

Uran was hesitant about inviting her in, but Titan and Cobalt (who was visiting) encouraged her to accept the witch's presence.

"How can we help you?" Uran asked.

"I'm looking for your brother." Rebeca replied. "I know that you can see him in your mind."

"After you turned him into a monster?" she said curtly.

"He's not a monster, he is now my equal and I don't consider myself a monster." Rebeca said. "Besides, it was ultimately his own choice. I only showed him the path that his destiny lay in. He accepted to follow it without any coercion. You know that to be true."

"Yes, I have read that in his mind." Uran admitted.

"So you are aware of where he is?"

"Not exactly." Uran said. "I know that he is traveling northward along the river looking for something. He told me that he had a quest ahead of him to find the answers he needed to fulfill his destiny, something about providing the seed for the creation of the next universe. I don't understand all of it, but I think I know what is happening. Cobalt has seen it via his observations at the observatory. What I do know is that my brother is still looking for the answers to his questions, and for the technology that he says is buried in the forbidden lands. He has already revealed that they have found one large city in ruins and are going to search for the two remaining ones."

"They will find nothing at the second site." Rebeca told them.

"What about the third?" Cobalt asked.

"He will find our destiny at the third." Rebeca answered.

"How do you know?" Cobalt asked.

"I have been there in a previous life," Rebeca told them, "for I have also been resurrected once before. Atom will find the key to our destiny and I should be by his side when he does for he will need my assistance."

"Atom said he will send for us when it is time" Uran answered.

"Then I will come along as well." Rebeca told him.

Cobalt bit his lip before speaking.

"At my brother's instruction I have started the construction of a vessel to travel down the river to meet up with Atom when the time comes." He said. Atlas has been at work casting the metal to lay down the keel of the ship. I've hired some of the townspeople to help with the construction of a shipyard and work has already begun on the ship. We hope to have it ready in time to join Atom when he contacts us."

* * *

**T**hey spent the night in the abandoned store. It was already dark outside, and rather than make their way back to their raft, they made use of bedding they found to make themselves comfortable. Atom hummed softly, creating the modulating tones in his voice. He directed his mind at Rock and forced his thoughts into his companion's mind. He read in Rock complete submission. Atom was now sure that he was in complete control over Rock as the imprinting had been accomplished.

Atom reached out with his thoughts and inner vision, and his mind found Rebeca and he realized that she had been looking for him. Now he longed for her because he knew that part of his destiny was to create the true heir to the universe, the soul that would cross over to the next. That could only be the child of an Elder Mother and an Elder Father. Atom now knew that he had been transformed into the first Elder Father of the priesthood in many centuries.

**T**he second city was a week's journey from the first. The river current had slowed as the body of water widened towards the north, and they had to resort to using their poles and paddles to make any progress. At first they didn't want to make land fall, for there it appeared that there would be nothing at all for them here. All of the buildings had been totally destroyed, decay and ruin were everywhere. The air smelled of an acid smoke, and at night they thought they could see fires burning in the ruins.

"I thought that this place had been destroyed millennia ago." Rock said. "How could it still be burning?"

"There must be something fueling the fires." Atom said. "I want to investigate."

They found a place to dock their raft close to one of the burning areas, but a safe distance away. Rock lit the way through the smoky darkness using a torch lantern he had found at their previous stop. Atom noticed puddles of an dark liquid on the ground seeping up from below the Earth. The liquid had a strange odor that made Rock dizzy when he sniffed it.

"This is some kind of fuel oil." Atom told him. "There must be a very sizable amount of the stuff stored deep underground that even now is making its way to the surface and continues to fuel these fires."

"That reminds me of something I've forgotten." Rock said.

"Yes, back in the 20th century when oil wells deep under the sea broke free from their anchors and spilled they contents into the ocean unchecked for decades." Atom said. "That was a disaster of incredible proportions that caused much of the global warming that eventually destroyed life on earth, sending mankind into deep space to look for new worlds to conquer."

**T**hey were back in the raft before nightfall, rowing slowly to find the current. They drifted all night, and into the morning, and then once again had to resort to the power of their muscles to make their way northward. They had no provisions with them, and the river contained no fish. Rock's stomach growled for the lack of food, Atom contained his hunger and rowed while Rock could not. It took them several days to get past the stench of the second city and find a place to make landfall where they could find something to eat.

They found a patch of wild corn growing along the river and picked as many ears of the grain as they could hold. Atom started a fire and boiled the vegetable two ears at a time in his pot. They ate their fill and satisfied their hunger, but Atom knew it was not enough. He smelled venison in the tall grass by the river and stalked his prey for hours while Rock sat at their camp. Hours later, Atom returned with a large buck he had shot with his bow and arrows. He prepared the meat as he had done before with the wild pig, and they finally had good protein to eat.

The third city was a good distance away, and with the river current going flat it would take them some time to make it there. Atom prepared a sail from cloth they had brought with them from the first city, and he made a mast from wood he cut down along the river. A good breeze picked up, and Atom tacked north against the wind. Rock worked the sail while Atom held the rudder. Their progress was now slow, but steady. Slowly the towers of the third city rose in the horizon.

Atom's inner vision told him that they would find what they were looking somewhere in the city that lay ahead of them. He felt the death knells of the universe pulling at his insides, it would not be much longer before the fabric of the cosmos began to unravel. It would soon be time to summon Uran and Cobalt. He reached out for Rebeca in his mind. Her presence would also be required.

Atom looked toward Rock who was busy working the oar of the raft. He hoped that his companion would be able to help him find what he knew was hidden somewhere in the city that loomed ahead of them.

* * *

_Thirty Two._

**C**obalt was surprised when the army of monks showed up at the dry dock demanding to work on the river boat. Atlas put them to work immediately and the work output doubled overnight. The work force was divided into several shifts, and construction on the ship continued all day and all night without stop. The iron keel of the craft was quickly laid down, the ribs welded into place. The hull quickly rose upon its framework and the steam engines were lowered into place. Two massive side wheels were dropped into position and two boilers with smoke stacks welded into place.

Rebeca showed up at the dry dock to take credit for the labor force. "You sent the monks here, didn't you," Cobalt asked her.

"Guilty as charged." Rebeca said. "If I'm to hitch a ride with you when the time comes, I thought I might as well pay for it in some way. Besides, we are running out of time."

Atlas thought Cobalt's design was ugly, and he wasn't afraid to tell him so. They argued about what to name the craft for several days before its launch. Atlas insisted on calling it the 'Iron _something_' since it was made of cast and forged iron in his blacksmith shop. Uran was impressed by the size of the steam engines that Cobalt had rebuilt from wrecks found in one of the abandoned buildings he was working in. Titan though that the ship reminded him of a penguin, because its wide hull and narrow upper body seemed fat at the bottom and skinny at the top, like a comical polar region flightless fowl waddling down the ice. All of the ideas stuck, and she was named the "Tetsuwan Penguin".

* * *

**L**amp was sweeping out the rubble in one of the factory like buildings that Cobalt had put on his "round tuit" list, meaning he'd investigate what was in there when "he got a round to it." The idea was totally Lamp's, his curiosity had gotten the better of him, and Cobalt had told him that if he had nothing better to do, he might as well start cleaning out one of the unexplored buildings and take inventory.

He'd made his way down to the second level basement when his hair started standing on end. There was a definite electrostatic charge down there and late at night he could dimly see something glowing under the pile of rubble in the middle of the floor. Lamp spent several days digging out the place with his bare hands when he came across the object. It was about a foot in diameter and two feet long. It wasn't very heavy considering its size and shape and the fact that it was glowing with a blue light. The damn thing was magnetic, sort of. It attracted more than just iron though, all sorts of metal was attracted to it by some kind of field that it radiated, and the better the conductor of electricity a material was the more it was attracted to this thing.

Cobalt carefully examined the object and realized that it literally did not belong in this universe. He concluded that it contained a chunk of anti vacuum, something left over from the big bang that had failed to go off. Being a chunk of an unborn universe, the cylinder's contents could be tapped for energy with an almost unlimited reserve. It was the elusive zero-point vacuum power source that science fiction claimed could power the universe. Cobalt figured out a way to use the strange thing as an electric power generator, and he installed it in the riverboat. He got rid of the coal bunkers and fire pits under the boilers in the Penguin's engine room and installed electric arc furnaces powered by the ZPM module that Lamp had found under each of the ships boilers. He figured that Lamp's discovery would enable him to double the speed that his craft would be able to make on the river.

**T**etsu chased his sister Argon around the boat while Uran kept after them. The two toddlers were growing up quickly, at a rate that was obviously far faster than normal. Cobalt understood what was happening, as the universe's expansion rate sped up, time itself was accelerating. He watched as seedlings grew into flowing plants almost overnight, young hatchings sprouted wings and left the nest within days of being born, and caterpillars completed their life cycles within hours. The strange images that Lamp had found on his plates were confirmed by the observations of time's movement all around him. Cobalt wished he had an atomic clock to actually measure what was happening, but the more basic measurements he could make revealed the truth. The universe didn't have very much time left. They would feel the big rip very soon now, perhaps Atom would not be in time to save them from it.

**U**ran woke in the middle of the night to find Tetsu tugging on her sheets. He'd walked from his room with his sister Argon following right behind him.

"Mommy, I'm scared!" he cried out. "I had a bad dream."

"So did I," Argon cried. "I dreamed we were all falling forever in the dark."

Uran hugged the two children and pulled them into bed with her. Titan rolled over to make room for his offspring in the king sized bed.

Atom's image appeared in the back of Uran's head.

"It's time." he said. "I've found what I've been looking for. I need you all here as soon as possible."

Uran got out of bed and opened the phone link to Cobalt's dormitory. Cobalt knew that the time would be soon that Uran would get the message he was waiting for from her brother. He'd installed a phone line between her estate and his campus and he'd been waiting for her call. The phone rang and he got out of bed.

"It's time to launch the Penguin." Uran said. "Atom is ready for us."

* * *

_Thirty Three._

**T**he Tetsuwan Penguin had been constructed at nearly twice the size that Cobalt had originally planed. The army of monks had worked 25/7 (the day on this planet was longer than on old Earth) along with the hired townspeople in building the ship. Rebeca had insisted that the vessel be made larger to accommodate a larger contingent of crew than originally intended, as the 12 priests and two dozen monks were now going to be on board. That in addition to Rebeca, Lamp, Cobalt, Atlas, Mars, Titan, Uran and her two children.

Cobalt estimated that they could make the trip in a under a weeks time. He wasn't sure of the ships top speed, but the available power was more than enough for the twenty knots he was hoping for under full steam, a much faster rate of travel than Atom had been able to make by foot, or on his raft.

The monks carried on board a good stock of food for the trip. Cobalt was bringing as much scientific instrumentation that he could carry, he wanted to be prepared for anything they might find.

Rebeca had her own cabin to herself in the forward part of the ship, she locked herself in there with a handful of monk servants.

Titan, Uran and the twins had a cabin of their own, while Atlas, Mars and Lamp shared quarters near the engine room. Cobalt set up a cot in the bridge, he was the captain of his ship and he intended to remain behind her wheel the whole time.

Atlas and Lamp started the boilers as Cobalt activated the ZPM and the ship lit up with its electric power. The carbon arc furnaces quickly came up to heat and the boilers developed full heads of steam. The escape valves cracked open and the whistles blew. Cobalt moved the throttle forward to the first notch and the two side wheel paddles began to stir the water around the vessel into a frothy foam. The Tetsuwan Penguin left the dock and started north up the river.

* * *

**T**he third city appeared slowly as it grew in size over the horizon. They were still a long way off, yet the skyline of the buildings now covered much of their distant field of view.

"It's huge!" Rock cried out, "I don't think Tokyo, Metro City, or New York were even close to that size."

"It surely must have been a megalopolis." Atom agreed. "Grab an oar and row with me, we must make the shore as quickly as possible."

The river lead them towards an inland waterway that led into the city. The channel entered a dark tunnel that took them underground. Atom could tell that the width of the passageway was quite wide, by the echo he heard with each stroke of their oars. Rock turned on his torch and they could see the approaching dock ahead of them. Finally the raft came to a stop and they climbed out onto a grated metal platform. There was a dim light ahead of them, and they started to walk in that direction. Their footsteps echoed within the enclosed area, but soon the reverberations ceased as the walls closed in closer on them. They were closer to the light ahead of them, and Atom noticed that the path they were walking on ramped upward slowly towards the surface. After walking for nearly a half hour they broke out of the dark tunnel and into a well lighted area. It was a glass walled enclosed room with a transparent ceiling. All around them were glass walled rooms with doors, it looked like some kind of an office complex. Rock pressed his face against one of the glass panels to look inside. Atom tried the lock on a door, but found it would not open. Inside the enclosed booth like room Rock could see some kind of advanced equipment that looked like a computer screen with a keyboard. None of the equipment appeared to be operating.

"This seems to be some sort of control complex." Atom noted.

"But for what?" Rock asked.

They continued along the corridor that they had entered the large space from and reached the far end where there was a large open doorway leading outside into the street. Atom looked up and saw skyscrapers towering upwards perhaps hundreds of stories high. They were walking along a wide boulevard devoid of vehicles, though the road was clearly intended for such traffic. The traffic signals were dark as were all of the lights they had seen in the city. There was no power to operate them.

"It would take us years to fully explore this place." Rock said. "It's vast."

"I feel the answer lies here somewhere." Atom said. "It's time Cobalt joined me. He will know what to look for."

Atom reached out with his mind and felt Uran. His thoughts were a homing beacon which his sister would have no problem following.

* * *

**T**he Tetsuwan Penguin chewed up the distance at a rapid pace. Titan stood at the stern of the ship and watched as the river receded behind them He buttoned his jacket to protect him from the wind laced with the spray of the river. He watched as Tetsu and Argon chased each other around the wheelhouse, he yelled out for them to be careful, the deck was becoming slippery due to the water spray kicked up by the side paddle wheels.

Cobalt wanted more speed and he engaged the twin drive screws under the stern of the craft. He'd added the additional drives at the last minute to the plans, he figured that since they wouldn't be carrying the weight of the coal originally intended as fuel for the boilers he could use the available space to install two additional turbine engines in the place of the coal bins. The high pressure steam from the boilers was now diverted through the turbines before being fed to the pistons of the engines driving the side wheels. Each of these engines had two sets of pistons, a high pressure one that ate the steam first, and a low pressure one that swallowed the exhaust of the first. The two pistons drove connecting rods that turned crank wheels which rotated the large paddle wheels on the ships sides.

The side wheels slowed slightly as the screw drives engaged, but the ship plowed ahead with greater vigor. It's bow lifted up out of the water as Cobalt lowered the sea wings that acted just like their aerodynamic counterparts did to lift an airplane into the sky. With the bow out of the water, the boat became a hydrofoil and skimmed along the top of the river with reduced drag, her speed quickly reached 30 knots.

Uran's mind acted as a location beacon for Atom and he knew how far away Cobalt and company were. They would be there soon enough at the rate of speed they were obtaining. Atom wondered just what kind of craft his brother had invented, knowing him it would be a marvel to behold.

Rock had disappeared from Atoms sight for a brief time, he soon returned holding a large plaque that he had removed from the wall of a nearby building.

"I think this is a map of the area." Rock said, "But I can't understand the writing,"

Atom scanned the map and took in all of the symbols and lettering. He was somewhat familiar with the script, it resembled the writing he'd seen in the bible that Rebeca had read from in the sanctuary of the priesthood within the castle. He was able to decipher the writing, but he didn't get the terminology.

There seemed to be large areas contained within several buildings not far ahead. The map seemed to indicate that they might be some kind of power stations, but the writing translated as 'drive generators'. The legend at the bottom of the map read "Dillon-Wagoner", each of the locations was marked as GPG with a number. There were a dozen of these installations, GPG1 through GPG12. There were dotted lines connecting each of the 12 installations to a common area, which appeared to be the glass office area with all of the isolated computer control booths that they had walked from just a few blocks behind their current position.

"I have no idea what these things are." Atom said. "But my inner vision tells me they are the key to what we are looking for. I hope this is the technology that my inner vision told me I would find. Cobalt will know."

"I say we take a look at one of these installations." Rock suggested.

"I agree." Atom answered.

They followed the map to the closest of the GPG sites, which was GPG7. A small plaque mounted on the wall of a building indicated that they had found the installation they were looking for, but they couldn't locate the entrance. Rock kicked at the ground around the area where the plaque was located and Atom could hear a hollow sound reverberating below the side walk. He bent down on his knees and started wrapping on the ground with his knuckles and he mentally mapped out the area below the concrete. There was a small hole in a metal plate screwed into the slab. Atom dug deep into his backpack and found his swiss army knife he'd taken from the blacksmith shop. He opened the knife and extracted the Phillips screwdriver blade, which was the longest one. He inserted that into the opening in the ground and pushed down. He was rewarded with a small metallic click and the plate snapped up into a raised position. Resting below the now open access was a handle which Atom grabbed and pulled up on. The slab of concrete was hinged and it slowly lifted up to reveal a staircase descending below street level.

"Ah ha!" Atom said. "Gotcha!"

Rock flicked on his torch lamp and illuminated their way down stairs. The descent wasn't very far, just one story level below the street. Sitting inside of a large recessed area in front of the stairwell was what looked like a huge turbine generator. There was a metal plaque on its side that read "Dillon-Wagner Graviton Polarity Generator #7"

Below that written in smaller italic letters was the phrase "Spindizzy 7"

"What the hell does that mean?" Rock asked.

"The hell if I know" Atom said. "That is geek talk that will require Cobalt to understand."

* * *

_Thirty Four._

**T**he Tetsuwan Penguin followed the river as it turned sharply to the left. Ahead was the first city that Uran's mind had seen though her brother's eyes. The results of a conflict were clearly evident as many of the buildings were damaged or destroyed. Yet, most of the city did remain intact, the streets were mostly passable and signs of repairs were evident. It was almost as if the city had tried to keep repairing itself why the bombardment was going on.

"This doesn't look like the result of a nuclear attack." Cobalt said.

"No, it looks more like the results of conventional warfare." Atlas agreed.

"This isn't the city mentioned in the bible." Rebeca said as she came up on deck. "We haven't come to the second city yet. Then you will see the damage."

Cobalt slowed the Penguin's engines while he lowered a water scoop below the ship. Several tons of the river water were forced up to refill the tanks for the boilers. He watched as the gauges rose to the full mark and then closed the scoop to complete the refilling operation. Once again he advanced the throttles as the steam pressure gauges rose into the top of the green arc. Cobalt advanced the power lever to the electric arc furnaces and allowed the boiler pressure to rise into the orange area of the pressure gauge as he increased the twin throttles to full. The sea wings bit into the water and the hydrodynamic wings raised the bow out of the water as the screws started to sing out at their top speed. The side wheels spun like crazy. Now on the straight away the Penguin clawed at the river as she reached a speed of 33 knots.

Cobalt watched the CRT screen in the bridge as his radar set painted the return of an echo. The outline of city #2 was being painted on the radar screen, although it was not yet visible on the horizon.

Rebeca looked into the wheelhouse and saw the electronics. "What is this work of the devil?" she asked Cobalt.

"It's not a thinking machine." Cobalt told her. "The principle of its operation is strictly analog, It's operation is similar to a telescope, but it uses a frequency of light much lower than the optical spectrum."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You could say it sees with sound, like a bat." Cobalt said

"Very well, I'll accept that." Rebeca replied. "I can accept spy glasses, if this device is similar to those then maybe the devil has nothing to do with it."

Cobalt lowered the binoculars from his eyes.

"Tell the kids to get below deck." he told Uran. "The second city is fast approaching. The sky in front of us is dark with clouds that may contain toxic elements."

Everyone got below deck except for Cobalt who remained in the wheelhouse. He closed the windows and activated the air recirculation fans. The Penguin had an air conditioning system that scrubbed and cleaned the air below deck and removed excess humidity. The same system was tied in to the wheelhouse. As they approached the city Cobalt retarded the throttle. He kept an eye on the radar and sonar screens to look out for debris floating in the water that could pose a hazard to the ship. He shut down the screws and lowered the bow down to the water level. They slowly past the derelict metropolis at a mere 15 knots, which Cobalt considered to be a safe speed.

The view out of the port holes was frightening. The sky filled with inky black clouds. Smoke rose from the bombed out buildings. Giant creators filled the spaces between the buildings. Rubble, broken glass, and despair were rampant.

"This is the site of the atomic destruction," Cobalt thought to himself. He wondered if the radiation count had yet dropped and he couldn't wait to be able to advance the throttles of the ship and leave the death and destruction behind him.

Finally, the radar and sonar screens looked clean, there was nothing in the water ahead of them that would have to be circumnavigated. Cobalt pushed the throttles back to the full position and the Penguin resumed her 33 knot race towards the third city where Atom was waiting for them.

**U**ran returned to the deck with her twins in tow. She knocked on the glass door to the wheelhouse and Cobalt opened it. "We're less than a hundred miles from Atom's position now." Uran said. "I can feel him strongly in my mind."

"What have they discovered?" Cobalt asked.

"You'll have to see if for yourself." She said. "I can't make out the details but it looks like the city was a complex power station of some kind, although all of the energy is dead. Atom seems to have discovered a central control complex connected to an array of strange generators scatter through the city. He has no idea what their purpose is."

"Well, we are now only about three hours away." Cobalt said. I guess the mystery can wait that long."

* * *

_Thirty Five._

**A**tom and Rock located the remaining eleven generator sites. Like the first one that they had found, most were located either in an underground chamber accessible via a stairway behind a hidden panel in the street, or were in the basement of one of the buildings. In each case the markings on the devices were the same, "Dillon-Wagoner Graviton Polarity Generator". Atoms limited knowledge of physics led he to assume that the equipment must somehow draw power from gravity waves, though he couldn't see how that would be useful in a metropolitan setting. Surely there were better ways to generate electrical power, and in any case, the city's power grid was stone cold dead.

"I think the answer to all this must be found in that control complex that we first entered after we landed the raft." Rock said. "I think we need to take a closer look at it."

"I agree." Atom said.

They walked back to the control complex to take a closer look at it. The site was centrally located in the middle of the matrix of the GPG sites, which now made sense to Atom. There were 12 of the glass walled control rooms, one per GPG obviously. They then noticed that there was a centrally located control area that was not walled in but was strangely out in the open. A large horseshoe shaped desk containing many control levers, meters, dials and switches, along with several CRT panels and keyboards lie dark and quiet. Several large view screen monitors hung from the ceiling in clear view of the operator's position at this main control point, all of them were dark.

Behind the desk, standing on the floor, was a large square box with a hinged lid. Atom tried to lift the lid, and discovered that it was unlatched and would open with some effort as it was quite heavy. There was a cylindrical shaped space inside of the box that seemed to accept some kind of plug in module about a foot in diameter and two feet tall. A heavy connection at the bottom with a twist lock mount would connect to some unknown module that was missing from the box.

"Whatever it is that was the key to operating this system went in there." Rock told Atom.

"I think you're right." Atom agreed.

* * *

**T**he radar screen was now returning solid blips and the outline of the third city was quite prominently visible on the horizon. Cobalt magnified the image on the screen and noticed a passage way off to the side that seemed to lead into an underground harbor. "They went that way." Uran said, pointing at the image on the radar. "I can see it in my mind through my brother's eyes."

"Right." Cobalt replied as he slowed the RPMs of the Penguins four steam engines. He took the turn to the right and steered the ship into the channel leading into the city. The Penguin's bow dropped to the water level as the sea wings were retracted. He shut down the screws and slowed the side paddle wheels to one quarter throttle. The ship glided along the waterway and entered a tunnel slanting downwards under the city. Cobalt switched on the flood lamps at the bow of the ship to illuminate their passage through the underground tunnel. The sound of the ships paddle wheels splashing through the water reverberated in an echo between the walls of the tunnel.

"It's spooky down here" Tetsu cried in fear. "I'm scared!" Argon cried, and the twins hugged their mother's legs. Cobalt switched on the deck lights and the walls of the tunnel became brightly illuminated. "There's no reason to fear the dark," he told the children, "Especially when I have the power to make it go away."

The radar began to beep loudly once a second. Cobalt slowed the engines more and stared ahead into the darkness. The beeping was now faster, twice a second , indicating that they were closing in on the end of the tunnel. Now the search lights showed the edge of a dock approaching. Cobalt suddenly threw the paddle wheels into full reverse, but it was too late. There was a loud crunching noise as the bow of the ship smashed into the raft that was floating in their path. The ship came to a full stop and Atlas jumped from the bow to the metal grating of the dock with a rope in his hand. He tied the ship to a railing and then returned for a second line to insure that they would not swing round and hit the dock.

"Well I guess we destroyed Atom's handiwork." Cobalt said. "I don't think we caused any damage to the Penguin though."

**C**obalt aimed the ships searchlights down the length of the tunnel and left them on full intensity. He handed each of the crew a portable flashlight as they departed the ship and stepped upon the metal grating of the dock. "Are you coming with us?" Cobalt asked Rebeca.

"Yes, I am." she said. "Should I leave any of the monks on board to guard the ship?"

"Might not be a bad idea," Cobalt thought, "Though I doubt that there is anybody alive in this place."

"I agree." Uran said. "I am picking up nothing except for Atom and Rock with my ESP."

"She's right." Rebeca said.

The small army marched along the dark corridor, and headed towards the light up ahead. They marched along the long tunnel leading upward at a mild incline. The entered the light and the glass walled control room to find Atom and Rock waiting for them. Uran ran towards her brother and gave him a hug.

"Welcome back brother." Atom told Cobalt. He pointed around him at the glass walled control room they were in.

"This is the first thing we discovered after we landed in this city." Atom said. "It appeared to be some kind of control room for a power station, but now I'm no longer sure that it's that simple. Over here is what looks like the main console, and there are 12 walled off areas that I'm guessing control subsystems."

Cobalt looked around and quickly took in what he saw around him. He walked up to the U shaped console and scratched his chin.

"This thing almost looks like the bridge of starship." Cobalt laughed. "But if that is the case, then where are the warp engines?"

"That's what was in the back of my mind as well," Atom said, "But only vaguely. As for your warp engines, well maybe we've found them as well. I need you to examine what may hold the answer to this city."

"Take me to your mystery." Cobalt said.

"Let's hurry, I have this vision that we need to complete this with urgent haste." Atom said.

They left the control room and headed out into the city outside.

**C**obalt followed his brother down the steps and found himself in front of GPG #7. He scratched his head as he walked around the turbine like device, carefully examining every nut and bolt holding it together. He seemed to be talking to himself as he held up the fingers of his right hand at three mutual right angles to each other, forming the X,Y, and Z axis of the Cartesian coordinate system.

"It can't be that simple, can it?" he asked.

"What can't be that simple?" Atom asked.

"It appears that my old classmate Photar might have been right all along." Cobalt laughed. "An electrical generator uses a rotating a metallic mass within a magnetic field to produce an electrical current. Physics tells us that it is also possible to generate a magnetic field by rotating a mass though a gravitational field. Now this device seems to take things along a third plane, it rotates atomic mass through a magnetic field, like a generator, but it does not involve any conduction current. I think it makes use of both Newton's gravitational constant and Coulomb's constant to invoke its vector of operation. Photar had postulated this device when he wrote his thesis about using the Blackett-Dirac hypothesis to solve the proof of Einstein's unified field theory."

"Can you say that in English?" Atom asked.

"Sure. This thing is an Anti Gravity engine, a Spindizzy." he said. "Just how many of them are there in this installation?"

"We counted 12 of them." Rock said.

Cobalt quickly estimated the mass of the rotator in the turbine and the possible magnetic field available in the field coils. He guessed at the operational RPM of the thing and crunched the numbers quickly in his head.

"Yes, I think it's possible." he said.

"What!" Atom, Rock, and Titan yelled at him.

"The 12 of these damn things should have enough power to rip this city off of its foundation and hurl it into space. I bet there are tunnels underground lined with explosives to blast the bedrock free under this city and allow these anti-gravity engines to lift it off the planet."

"Lift an entire city?" Titan asked.

"Sure." Cobalt answered. "In fact the greater the mass acted upon the more efficient these generators would be. They can easily lift this entire city into space and propel it at greater than relativistic speed."

"Why the hell would anyone want to do that?" Titan demanded.

"To enter the singularity." Atom answered. "To get to the ground zero point of the big rip."

"Huh?" Titan said.

"He's right." Cobalt face palmed.

"That is what I'm supposed to do, isn't it?" Atom said. "We are to offer our souls as a burnt offering to the cosmos and re-spark creation anew after the universe self destructs."

"We're still missing something." Cobalt broke in. "Like how do we power this array of anti-gravity engines?"

"The answer must be in that control center we just left." Atom said.

They quickly returned to the glass walled conclave.

"I think there is some gizmo missing from this place that is the key to start up the system." Atom said as he opened the lid to the large box next to the main console. "There is some key module missing that seems to plug right here. Perhaps it's the power source for all of those Spindizzy things."

Cobalt looked inside and saw the familiarly shaped hollow. Lamp walked up to the box and peered inside.

"Hey that looks like where my ZPM thingy should plug in!" Lamp said.

"You're right!" Cobalt said face palming again. "I think we've brought the power source that runs this place with us."

"What!" Atom yelled.

"It's plugged into my ship's engine room at the moment." Cobalt laughed. "Lamp found it buried under the rubble in one of the abandoned buildings that I hadn't explored yet. Near as I can tell, it's a zero-point vacuum energy module with a frozen big bang power source."

* * *

_Thirty __Six__._

**W**hile Lamp and Atlas ran back to the ship to retrieve the ZPM from the Tetsuwan Penguin's engine room, Cobalt shared his knowledge with his brother.  
"Lamp has been crucial to everything that has happened, though he accomplished it all by accident." Cobalt laughed. "He showed me how to analyze the the images on the photographic plates, and discovered that ZPM power source. The universe is rapidly running out of time, in fact time itself has been speeding up, the closer we get to the big rip the more quickly time moves. Uran's twins are maturing at a rapid pace, they are already nearly four years old physically, although they were born less than a year ago. The effects of dark energy and dark matter on the expansion of the universe is accelerating at an increasing pace and we are now in the final stages of the event. Within a few days at the most, the big rip will begin and all mater will tear itself apart. The universe will deteriorate into a very thin cloud of sub subatomic particles and will come to an end."

"That sounds rather awful" Rock said.

"I did notice one other thing from my observations." Cobalt said. "This system is very close to the epicenter where the big rip will emanate from. In other words we are very close to ground zero for the big un-bang."

Atom's mind rapidly ran though a sequences of images that his inner sight was now receiving. He was suddenly absorbed in a revelation that calmed his soul.  
"That all makes sense to me." Atom said. "I guess I've known all along why we have been resurrected on this world and what our purpose is. The universe was created around a sentient seed, a bit of energy that was self aware and alive. It was certainly left over from a previous universe, it was aware of its purpose and it drove the formation of everything, creating order out of chaos. I believe now that this sentient energy is what humans have thought of as God. This sentient energy has kept inventory of all sentient energies that ever came into being in the universe and every soul that ever existed, and it has looked though them all to pick out the ones that will form the matrix of the next universe as the current one nears death. That's what all religions have thought of as the judgment day, though the real meaning of it was never clear to them. It brought us here because this planet is the closest one to the epicenter of the end of one universe and the creation of the next. If we are situated exactly at ground zero at the end, we can influence the event. We can supply the seed for the next creation. The people who built this city knew this, they realized how close to ground zero this planet was, and they built this complex for the purpose of moving the city to the exact spot."

Atom thought for a moment, then continued. "I'm the key to this, but I can't do it alone. It will require the mental concentration of all the members of the priesthood, the Elder Mother and the Elder Father. The last one is me by the way. We can implant ourselves as the driving force for the next creation."

"No." Rebeca said. There is still something missing."

"What is that?" Atom asked.

"The seed." she said. "The universe needs a soul to wrap itself around. We can become the matrix of the next universe, but there must be a central seed to wrap our collective souls around. You are correct Atom, God didn't create the universe, he IS the universe. The universe was created with a consciousness which governed it's very existence. At the moment when the old universe dies, a new one can be born, if there is a consciousness to bring it into being. That was the purpose of our order. It was the reason that you came along to ascend to the role of Elder Father, and for me to become the Elder Mother. Now we must create a child, his soul will be that seed."

"But there isn't time!" Atom sobbed, "The universe will end in only a few days!"

"But time is speeding up rapidly." Cobalt said. "A child conceived today would be born a few days before the event."

Rebeca removed her robe and let it drop to the floor. Atom slipped off his G-string and stood naked before Rebeca. They looked into each other's eyes and saw only each other as if the world had dissolved from their view. Atom pressed himself against Rebeca and they copulated. Rebeca saw Atom's sperm fertilize her eggs with her inner vision. Atom also witnessed the event with his. Their lips met in an embrace which they held for several moments. With the act completed, they separated.

Everyone was standing there in awe and Uran was crying. Atlas and Lamp chose that moment to walk in carrying the glowing ZPM module, and Lamp asked "What happened? Did I miss anything important?"

Atom grabbed the ZPM from Lamp and lowered it into place in side the large box. He closed the lid.

Suddenly the lights on the main console came to life. CRT screens all over the room powered on and each of the 12 locked doors to the control rooms snapped open. As if on clue, each of the priests entered one of the 12 rooms and sat in front of the keyboards, acting as if they knew exactly what was expected of them. Rebeca sat down in front of the main console and smiled.

"Our order has race memory that seems to have just been activated." She explained. "This is what we were intended to do, it is our function. I will pilot this starship city to the center of the ground zero point. My priests will monitor the operation of the engines of this ship."

Cobalt watched as Rebeca activated the main switch. A map appeared on a large screen above her head showing the outline of the city. A red boarder line was displayed within part of the city, and at regular intervals along it flashes of light appeared. Atom realized that the outline on the display corresponded exactly to the large outline surrounding part of the city that he and Rock had seen on the old map. The ground shook as seismic waves reached the complex. Explosions were going off under ground at key locations in the bedrock, tearing the foundation of the city apart. A loud whirling sound filled the air as each of the 12 Graviton Polarity Generators spun up to power. As the spindizzies reached full max spin the ground shook and everyone's ears began to ring with pain.

Through the large glass windows they saw a shimmering silver wall surround the city as the spindizzy field came up to full power. The ground below them began to quiver as a feeling of vertical acceleration became evident. The bedrock below them ripped free of the Earth, and entire city slowly rose upward, leaving the planet behind. Gradually the sky became dark as they rose above the atmosphere of the planet, but the spindizzy field trapped enough of it to enable them to breathe. The city headed out into space, its path was now indicated on a large computer screen above the main control console.

Rebeca was at the controls. She seemed to know exactly where to move the city as they left the dwarf star behind them and moved out into the void of interstellar space. Cobalt looked at the readout on the main console. He could read the coordinate system being used and he saw the target location. He dug into his memory and tried to recall the data from his own observations and realized that they were heading for the exact point in space where he predicted that ground zero for the big rip would be.

Rebeca already was showing, her uterus was distended from the fetus she was carrying. She'd only been pregnant for a few hours, but she now appeared to be at least several months along.

Uran's twins were now as tall as Atom had been when he had been created. They appeared to be nine year olds, and were more than half their mother's height. Cobalt was right, it seemed that the closer to the epicenter of the big rip they got, the faster time moved along. Cobalt watched the screen as the dot indicating their current position approached the 'x' of the indicated target. With the city traveling at 2 or 3 'C', They were now minutes away from station keeping.

"Now what?" He thought.

The city was now sitting at ground zero. Rebeca locked the controls onto autopilot and walked away from the console. She was now in labor pain as her pregnancy had already reached full term. Atom attended her, wiping her forehead with a damp cloth as the first wave of contractions rolled over her body. He looked into her womb with his inner vision and saw that the baby was in the proper head first position, ready for delivery. Rebeca pushed, and Atom could see the crown of the baby's head. She pushed again and Atom held his child in his arms. He cut the umbilical cord with his teeth, and tied off the end. It was a healthy baby boy, who cried out with his first inhale of air into his new lungs.

Cobalt watched as the infant boy that had just been born rapidly grew before his eyes. Time was now moving past them at warp speed. Rebeca and Atom's child now appeared to be about nine years old. Cobalt's jaw dropped as he saw who the boy had become, for Tobio Tenma had been reborn before his eyes. His auburn hair sported the two cowlicks that Umataro had made part of Atom's features.

"Quickly!" Tobio yelled out. "We must join together!"

Rebeca took the lad's left hand in her right, and Atom held his son's right hand with his left. Uran, and Titan pulled the now teen-aged Tetsu and Argon close to them and grabbed hold of Atom. Cobalt joined them, with Mars and Atlas holding on to him.

Everything began to grow dark as very fabric of the universe began to grow weak.

Atom reached out one last time with his mind. He called upon the last of his mental energy as the Teska elixir flowing though his bloodstream released the last of its powers into his brain. He saw all of creation swirling about him. He saw God as an image of an old man standing next to that of a young boy. The child had Tobio's face, his hair with two star like cowlicks. The old man removed a crown made of wood from his head and placed it upon Tobio's. The kingdom of creation had been handed over to its next sovereign.

Starting from the very spot where they all now stood, the universe began to unravel. The very fabric of existence was melting away as every particle of matter that ever existed was being torn apart into a thin cold soupy film on the very membranes of the hyperverse.

Atom, Uran, Cobalt, Titan, Tetsu, Argon, Rebeca, Mars, Atlas, and Tobio ceased to physically exist as their corporal bodies exploded into subatomic particles. Their Kokoro merged into a single cloud of concentrated consciousness, a hive mind under the control of the seedling named Tobio, that Atom and Rebeca had created.

Time now stood still, for the invisible forces of eternity operate outside of time itself. Two parallel branes of the hyperverse came together somewhere in the infinite hyperspace and a small bubble of space-time was created. The Kokoro of the multi souled seed entered the bubble which they had been waiting to form, and a new universe exploded into existence around them. Somewhere within the bubble the sentient force began to shape the infant universe. The combined kokoro of their seed watched their creation unfold under Tobio's control. What remained of their minds melded together with his, he learned quickly and began to exert his powers. Already the energy of the new universe was cooling and matter was beginning to condense out of the hot bubble of creation. Their minds guided Tobio's who was now shaping the foundation of creation as stars and planets formed over billions of years. Their combined wisdom and kindness would rule over all of creation for another trillion years.

_The End_


End file.
